Dyson Vac Maintenance, 3D-Printed Upgrades... & Disposal
Repair and upgrade your Dyson Cyclone V10 Vacuum cleaner (et al) for extended life and usage... But know when it's time to move on.
Today my Dyson Cyclone V10 Animal died. But not without a valiant and/or foolish effort to save the patient.
Roughly 5 years ago my wife sent me to Costco with the vague suggestion that I should see if they had any new vacuum cleaners that we might want to buy. That afternoon I came back with several-hundred fewer dollars in our collective account and a brand new Dyson Cyclone Animal V10 cordless vacuum cleaner.
What can I say, it looked awesome, and I actually started doing the vacuuming for fun for a period of time. These vacuum cleaners work well, but they require some maintenance and/or upgrades to keep them running at peak efficiency. Even so, at some point they wear out beyond economical repair.1
Below I outline my upgrades and fixes for this device, what ultimately did it in, and what we can learn from the process [fix… but not too much]. And no, running over the non-existent cord isn’t what killed it!
Upgrade #1: 3D-printed support/tool storage
The Dyson V10 vacuum comes with a hanging charger/holder. This is ~fine but it only holds two accessories at a time. And there’s no support on the bottom, meaning there is a lot of potential torque on the base if something/someone were to run into it. My response: a 3D-printed support and accessories holder, which also uses my second-favorite assembly tool, zip-ties:
Really that’s the only “upgrade” on this list, unless you count the GoPro mount that I made at the same time for FPV filming.
On a related note, These reusable zip-ties are awesome. Highly recommended.
Maintenance #1 - battery “upgrade”
While rechargeable, the battery for these Dyson vacuums eventually dies. Fortunately(?) Dyson sells replacement battery packs for “just” $129.99. A quick search of Amazon reveals a range of aftermarket parts for around a third of that price that seem to work fine.
According to ChatGPT, Dyson’s original batteries are rated at 2.6 Amp-hours. Mostly identical aftermarket batteries advertise capacities from 3 to 7 Amp-hours, but having replaced a few I haven’t noticed much difference. My suspicion is that they are all the same and they are just putting whatever label they want on them.2
An actual upgrade would be these interchangeable Ryobi battery pack adapters. However, they have the serious drawback of disabling the standard Dyson plug-in-hanging charger. Also, it makes the unit significantly larger. Helpful for some, but it’s probably not for me.
Tip: write the date that the battery went into service on the bottom, giving you some indication when it’s time to move on to a new pack. I haven’t exhaustively tracked this, but if your battery is two years old, it’s about time to move on.
Maintenance #2 - trigger
After a few years of use, the trigger on my Dyson V10 Vacuum broke. This part is a bit difficult to access, but once you’ve taken everything apart it can be replaced by an inexpensive part from Amazon et al. What’s frustrating here is that a little bit more plastic could keep this from happing some huge percentage of the time. Either Dyson didn’t test this (unlikely) or they did and said “uhh, whatever” and/or “wow, this could drive more sales.”3
I’m generally not that cynical about product design for planned obsolescence, but… I’m a bit more cynical after seeing this bit of shoddy engineering..
Maintenance #3 - dirty filter/internals (i.e. starts/stops)
If your Dyson Vacuum starts sucking and immediately stops, most likely it means that there is a clog in the system. The exit filter may need to be washed, or there could be a piece of debris stuck internally that it can’t “digest.” You may even notice that it will start on max, but not on medium or low, quickly draining the battery.
The filter is washable in tap water, which makes this process really easy, though you’ll need to let it dry before using it again. Keeping a second or third filter on hand is a good idea, and they are often included with new batteries as a part of a combo kit.
Once you’ve examined your filter etc, you might also consider the vacuum’s motor. It too can get quite dirty, and in this latest repair iteration I stripped it down [based on this video] to the point where I could give it a good clean. This wasn’t easy, especially considering a few connections that had to be removed and put back on.
A time to repair, a time to replace 🎶
As the Beatles Ecclesiastes/Byrds famously noted, there is a season for everything, and after cleaning the motor and putting everything back together my vacuum still only worked on its Max setting. Perhaps it was a time for a new motor unit.
However, looking at the Amazon motor listings, these parts are either rather expensive, or would take a long time to arrive. Also, in the process of multiple repairs, some of the plastic screw bosses on this vacuum have broken. Finally, internal sealing rings in the dust can section had come loose.4
In other words, my vacuum cleaner was falling apart; like Humpty Dumpty, no amount of tape, glue, king’s horses, or king’s men seem to be able to restore it to its original form. It was time to surrender and procure a replacement. As shown👇 the new V10 does look pretty awesome.
So what have we learned here?
Lesson #1: If you never repair anything (yourself), be prepared to pay a lot of money for replacements. I’m not sure how many vacuum cleaners I would have gone through without a bit of maintenance, but vacuum #1 would have worn out way sooner.
Lesson #2: Keeping stuff in service longer than normal is great from a minimize-things-in-landfills perspective. I wouldn’t consider myself an avid environmentalist, but throwing a comparatively giant chunk of plastic and metal out because of a cracked trigger seems especially wasteful/irresponsible!
Lesson #2A: Related to #2, but targeted at Dyson et al. Stop making the proverbial and/or literal trigger thats going to break after X number of cycles because it lacks a few cents (at most) worth of plastic. Hopefully the new model is better.
Lesson #3: Evaluate when to repair and when to replace. You may love your car/truck/washing machine/vacuum cleaner/trampoline/etc., but at some point you’ve loved it for too long. Or, as the saying goes, “If you love some[thing], you have to let it go [to the dump].”
I’m not sure that is a good general policy, other than as an attempt give a jilted person some sort of solace.5 In the case of worn out things, maybe you’ll feel better about spending the money for a “new one,” whatever that is. Maybe you could also go without, but with a family of five + one canine, a vacuum cleaner is something of a necessity in our household.6
Thanks for reading! I hope you will follow along as I post weekly about engineering, technology, making, and projects. Warning: I am a native Florida man, and may get a little off-topic in the footnotes. Maybe I even had an alligator or two as pets growing up. Perhaps they are alive today and could be used to test earth-wormhole pet friendliness.
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Addendum/Footnotes:
I also recently replaced my ~15-year-old washing machine with a new LG model, also from Costco. After several repairs over the years, it was squeaking badly and leaking oil onto the floor. The new model, however, works flawlessly, and even has a clear portion on the top that allows you to look down into the load-in-progress. This is extremely cool to look at now, and may be good for troubleshooting in the future.
It was an expensive month, but it’s a great feeling to have things that work as they should. It is also good to know when to surrender to replacement, though I likely exceeded that point for the washing machine.
No I can’t–or at least haven’t–proven that all Dyson replacement batteries from China are the same, but it seems a bit the labeling seems a bit sus’ as the kids say these days.
To their possible credit, it seems that Dyson has made some minor changes to the Dyson V10 Cyclone Animal since we bought our first unit several years ago. The tube is purple, and the mini-vac attachment is slightly different. Does this mean they also upgraded some internals for better longevity? Maybe. Maybe not. Perhaps I will find out in the next few years.
I tried replacing this, thinking maybe it had something to do with a suction sensor that was causing the unit to malfunction, to no avail.
You should likely leave off the “to the dump” part when consoling someone. Also, “spend money” wouldn’t directly apply to relationships, though I guess you have to spend time and money on dates, swiping right, and/or adult kickball leagues.
If that’s how things work these days. I’ve been out of the dating world for some time. Feels like I caught the last chopper out of ‘Nam giving the state of things.
One might argue that since vacuum cleaners only appeared in the 20th century, they’re not technically a a necessity for human survival. OTOH, humans also got along without daily baths, indoor plumbing, and life expectancies in the 30 to 40-year range. Most of human existence was very dirty and unpleasant indeed.
Sadly, I originally wrote this before our dog died. You were a good girl, Evie 🐾 😥, even if you did shed a lot!