After some googling, I've found several explanations of what is going on in a dual-voltage hair dryer, but I've been unable to glue them together into a solid understanding of what is probably a very simple circuit. (I should specify that I'm talking about the cheapest type of hair dryer, which has a single high/low switch, rather than separate speed & heat switches.) One of the suggestions I've found is that the 110/220v "switch" does nothing but physically lock out the High setting, leaving the circuit exactly the same - meaning the high/low switch is the relevant one.
Conflicting results suggest: 1) the low/high switch simply puts a diode in series with the AC input, chopping off half the wave & thereby reducing power by half. 2) the low/high switch moves the AC input from one end of the heating element to the middle, putting the two halves in parallel instead of series.
The diagram at the bottom of this page shows a setup like #1, with the motor in series (well, behind a bridge rectifier) with half of the coil. But a doubling of the input voltage here seems like it would lead to a doubling of the current through Coil 2, and hence 4x the power/heat, rather than 2x. So maybe that diagram doesn't apply to a dual-voltage dryer.
My ultimate goal here is to predict how a dual-voltage dryer will behave on 220v. Will the air speed on Low be equivalent to the High setting on 110v? Will the heat produced be equivalent/more/less?
Lacking one that I can crack open, I'll settle for a diagram/explanation of a generic device, and just roll the dice based on the result.
Conflicting results suggest: 1) the low/high switch simply puts a diode in series with the AC input, chopping off half the wave & thereby reducing power by half. 2) the low/high switch moves the AC input from one end of the heating element to the middle, putting the two halves in parallel instead of series.
The diagram at the bottom of this page shows a setup like #1, with the motor in series (well, behind a bridge rectifier) with half of the coil. But a doubling of the input voltage here seems like it would lead to a doubling of the current through Coil 2, and hence 4x the power/heat, rather than 2x. So maybe that diagram doesn't apply to a dual-voltage dryer.
My ultimate goal here is to predict how a dual-voltage dryer will behave on 220v. Will the air speed on Low be equivalent to the High setting on 110v? Will the heat produced be equivalent/more/less?
Lacking one that I can crack open, I'll settle for a diagram/explanation of a generic device, and just roll the dice based on the result.