New Dyson vaccum cleaner has "switched reluctance" motor, producing 104,000RPM
telegraph.co.uk
telegraph.co.uk
They have them in several airports I frequent and they are, in a word, awesome. One of those genuinely better mousetraps I wish I had thought of first.
More info on switched reluctance motors here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Switched_Reluctance_Motor
What is the rotor then? The wikipedia "reluctance motor" article mentions the rotor having flux barriers. Is it something like an iron daisy?
As others have mentioned, the AirBlade - the hand dryer that uses this motor - is awesome, and generates some serious breeze. Sadly, it's almost too smart: you use it somewhat differently than you use a normal hand dryer, and if you don't (and use it normally) you loose most of the genius of the design.
It has a turbine on it - direct coupled by the look of it - I wonder if it rotates the turbine at that speed - or if it slows down as it loads up - it's seems a big turbine to be doing that sort of speed - it would move a huge amount of air at that speed.
It's hard to see from the pic - but it looks like it only has one coil on it - it needs more than one to start rotating - so maybe it does have 2 or 3.
Anyway awesome - good to see the move to brushless technology in these medium size appliances - previously the domain of the old series wound universal motor.