Dyson Launches Airblade Tap, A Hand-Drying Water Faucet

Dyson has announced its Airblade Tap, a combination water tap and hand dryer that is completely hands-off and eliminates the need to walk from the sink to the hand dryer, dripping all over the floor on the way there. Utilizing infrared sensors, water turns on automatically when one goes to wash their hands, then the air dryer "blades" activate when the hands are moved slightly outwards. Check out a video of it in action after the jump.

The drying mechanism works via a brushless DC motor, which produces two sheets of air at 420mph, working as a type of squeegee for the liquid on the user's hands. According to the announcement, the Airblades can dry wet hands in 14 seconds. The motor is said to be one of the smallest fully integrated 1400 watt units in the world.

The air from the airblades is unheated and goes through a HEPA filter, removing nearly all bacteria at 0.3 microns. To keep the contraption from being too noisy, the tap features six Helmholtz silencers to keep the motor noise down. Elements of the units are said to be nearly inaudible. The entire tap is made from stainless steel cut with lasers to create extremely minimal spaces between different parts of the faucet.

The motor was teased back on January 31, when Dyson sent out launch invitations, showing the components of a motor that was the result of seven years of development. We had speculated that the hinted products would be of the Airblade dryer variety. The tap is available as of today, and comes with a 5 year warranty.