Abstract: A balancing method and apparatus is used for dynamically balancing an out of balance condition in a rotating body caused by resistance forces acting tangentially to the body. A device having a rotatable component and automatic or dynamic balancing includes a housing, a shaft rotatably mounted in the housing, the shaft supporting the component near one end of the shaft, at least one counterweight fixedly mounted on the shaft and at least one automatically adjusting balancer mounted on the shaft. The automatically adjusting balancer includes one or more compensating masses contained to move about a path relative to the shaft to compensate for variable imbalanced forces acting on the component.

Abstract: A horizontally oriented laundry washing machine which includes automatic balancers is operated at a speed below the stick speed for the laundry load to redistribute portions of the load in the wash basket. By monitoring a condition of the machine indicative of the level of balance of the load, and selectively accelerating and decelerating the wash basket about the stick speed, the load can be redistributed so that the load imbalance is sufficient low to speed up the wash basket through its natural resonant frequencies.