A clothes dryer is a surprisingly simple machine. See more clothes dryer images.
A clothes dryer can be found in just about every house in the United States, and millions more of them are manufactured each year. They are very reliable, and very cheap to build. You'll be surprised at how simple this common machine is. Clothes dryers have:

  • A rotating tumbler that holds the clothes.
  • An electric or gas powered heater that heats the air that is drawn through the clothes as they tumble, which in turn heats up the clothes and the water in them.
  • An exhaust vent that passes out of the dryer and out of the house -- this is how the water exits the dryer in the form of steam.

In this edition of How Stuff Works, we'll take apart a clothes dryer and explore how each system works. We'll start by following the air through the machine, then see how the tumbler and fan turn, and finally we'll look at the controls.

 

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