What was unthinkable many years ago had suddenly become all the rage in the world of vacuum cleaners. The bag-less vacuum cleaner, once thought of as an impossible dream, has now become a profitable reality. Although still in its infancy, the bag-less vacuum cleaner is gaining in acceptance around the world.

The current style uses an internal system called Filtered Cyclonic, a descriptive phrase that describes the means of separating the dirt and dust from the incoming air stream. The filtered cyclonic invention uses a directional air pattern to spin the vacuumed dirt inside a cylinder, forcing the heavier and larger particles against the wall of the cylinder where they drop to the bottom of the collection bin. The faster and faster the dirty air spins, the better the separation with only the smaller, lighter particles remaining in the middle. These leftover particles are then sent through the device by the outgoing air stream, through a filter designed to remove them from the air before it exits the back of the machine. It wasn’t until the 1990’s this invention was applied to household units by the now-defunct Fantom Company of Canada.

Another type of bag-less vacuum cleaner uses the “dirt cup” and is found mostly in commercial units. Used successfully for over 30 years, these bag-less vacuum cleaners use no disposable bags but are not cyclonic. Debris and dust is filtered from the air stream by a cloth bag similar to the early designs.

The difference here is that this bag collects the dust and debris on an inner wall inside the bag and forms what is called a “filtering dirt cake”. The vibration of the motor and general movement of the machine causes the dirt cake to fall off when it reaches a critical mass of weight and it lands in the dirt cup which can be easily removed, cleaned and reinserted back into the machine. It is only recently that the dirt cup bag-less vacuum cleaner has been introduced as a household cleaner.