A socialite who hated washing dishes invented the automated dishwasher • Hacker News Board

Re: A socialite who hated washing dishes invented the automated dishwasher

#201

Post by blacksmith_tb » Wed, Oct 07, 2020, 4:28 PM UTC

prawn wrote: post #189

Chris2048 wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Dishwashers spray hot water around an enclosed space, how would a bathroom work? Would teach component (bath/toilet etc) have an enclosure, or the whole bathroom? How much hot water would you need for that? What liability would there be for being inside when it went off? Probably a tile-crawling robot would be a better bet.

Rotating pressure sprays mounted about 6-7' up that spray the shower walls and bathroom floor, aiming diagonally down. Water would quickly drain via floor drains. Besides the toilet, it really only needs to deal with a bit of dust that wouldn't be hard to dislodge if cleaned every few days. I don't think it would need to be so hot that it was an issue if you were caught inside - just like being on the lawns when spri…

The key is that the volume of the dishwasher is small, and in fact it has heating elements (plus insulation) to raise the water temp, so it can recirculate that hot water (mixed with soap). I can imagine a bathroom with a drain (mine in fact has a concrete floor and a drain, so I can mop the whole floor into it) but there's no way to recirculate (or heat) water sprayed all over it, so the waste of water and energy would be huge.

Re: A socialite who hated washing dishes invented the automated dishwasher

#202

Post by disown » Wed, Oct 07, 2020, 4:31 PM UTC

je_bailey wrote: post #168

crumbshot wrote: post #162

> She designed her first model in the shed behind her house in Shelbyville, Ill. Her lack of formal engineering education, however, became an obstacle, so she sought out someone who could help. Mechanic George Butters agreed to assist her in building the prototype. So the engineer did all the actual hard work here in coming up with a working prototype, but the wealthy funder takes almost all of the credit, and puts t…

No. She came up with the idea, she built the prototype, she had the vision. To name some lackey who only did what they were told an inventor is a disservice.

Lackey? That's like saying steve jobs founded apple and steve wozniak was a lackey. Ideas aren't worth anything unless you have someone who can actually turn the idea into a reality. Strange to see this kind of dismissive response of an actual engineer here.

Re: A socialite who hated washing dishes invented the automated dishwasher

#203

Post by jelliclesfarm » Wed, Oct 07, 2020, 4:51 PM UTC

Cthulhu_ wrote: post #120

jelliclesfarm wrote: post #72

https://dishcraft.com/ : what dishcraft is doing now...dishwashing robots. dishwashing at restaurants..as a service.

Could work for large volumes, but TBH I feel like the logistics involved make it overly complicated; the industrial dishwashers mentioned elsewhere take like 90 seconds for a run. Why spend the time loading, driving, unloading, cleaning, loading, driving, unloading for a 90 second cycle? I mean I get it when it comes to laundry (at hotel scale), the volume of stuff is much larger, it's not fragile so packaging and ha…

There is AI involved. That means data and visual identification.

It would be very easy to turn this into an automatic plating robot. When they were giving out google glass years ago, I remember talking to a Belgium company that was using it in food service to train employees.

Example: assembling a hamburger. First teach glass what is lettuce, bun, condiments etc and the order in which it will go. Next when a new employee comes..all they have to do is wear glass..then it would highlight which item would go in which order to assemble a hamburger. Etc.

The dishwashing robot ..IMO..should be the first step to an automated restaurant kitchen. Or catering outfit. Or cruise ship. I have fine dining BoH experience and I can see that there are many possibilities here. So easy to train if it has a vision system. My 2c.

Re: A socialite who hated washing dishes invented the automated dishwasher

#204

Post by bluGill » Wed, Oct 07, 2020, 5:09 PM UTC

leadingthenet wrote: post #185

bluGill wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unless you rinse first, then hand washing is less water.

But why would you do that? It's a waste of time and energy, in my experience, when the washing machine does a perfectly fine (and often even better) job.

Your preaching to the choir to me. I know a very large number of people who do rinse everything nearly clean before putting into the dishwasher, they do not understand me.

Re: A socialite who hated washing dishes invented the automated dishwasher

#205

Post by LeifCarrotson » Wed, Oct 07, 2020, 5:32 PM UTC

Aerroon wrote: post #170

copperx wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a blog post somewhere in the web of someone that installed a commercial dishwasher in his kitchen. It requires 220 V and uses an enormous amount of power, but it cleans a load in 90 seconds.

However, does it use more or less power than a regular dishwasher in aggregate? My understanding is that a regular dishwasher takes a while to run. I've never owned one, so I don't really know.

A typical 'eco' cycle might take about 90 minutes. The dishwasher might have a rated peak load of 10A/1200W, but you can't just multiply that by 1.5 hours.

The peak power is for the resistive heater, which runs for several minutes at the start and intermittently throughout the cycle, as heat is lost through the insulated enclosure and out with the periodically drained water. But most of the duration is spent pulsing the small 1.3A/160W/0.2 HP circulation pump. It works out to a little less than 1 kWh for the full cycle.

Like my high-efficiency front-loading clothes washer, it ostensibly reduces energy and water use by running a small, efficient motor for a long time instead of a high-power motor with lots of water for a short time.

A commercial dishwasher might have a 30 amp, 220V heater, and a 3 horsepower 220V motor. The heater draws 6.6 kW for 4 minutes to warm up the machine before you can run the first load, or 0.4 kWh, and the motor runs for 90 seconds at 2.3 kW, so the total power requirement is actually less than the 'Energy Star' consumer unit at 0.5 kW/cycle!

Re: A socialite who hated washing dishes invented the automated dishwasher

#206

Post by novok » Wed, Oct 07, 2020, 7:20 PM UTC

sneak wrote: post #136

TeMPOraL wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Quoting that same person's latter reply: "One of the things about commercial equipment is the lack of insulation. So there could be issues with the booster heater affecting the counters around it. The moisture that comes with a high temp machine are also an issue. Maintenance can be a problem if he doesn't have a softener. EDIT: probably the worst thing though, which is mentioned by someone else below, is that if a c…

I’ve been kicking around the idea of a proper commercial kitchen in the house I’m thinking of building in the next few years, and it seems like this is definitely the kind of stuff you need to plan the whole room around. That said, who doesn’t want a big gas griddle, serious fume hood exhaust, and a giant three door stainless fridge in their kitchen?! I’m so tired of smoke detectors going off when I try to cook a ste…

Does commercial kitchen equipment try via how it's designed to prevent smells from wafting around? I think if you want to prevent that you need doors on your kitchen and to not combine it with the dining space. Which is hard to find because most parties and social life revolves around the kitchen, so most people don't like that setup thus builders never build it. There is also the general trend to make houses into large open spaces for living, dining and kitchen, which makes it even worse. Like the open office trend!

Re: A socialite who hated washing dishes invented the automated dishwasher

#207

Post by [deleted] » Wed, Oct 07, 2020, 8:11 PM UTC

tonyedgecombe wrote: post #86

baq wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You’re supposed to throw leftovers out before putting dishes in the dishwasher but rinsing before is overkill and greatly reduces both time and environmental gains of using one.

Are there any environmental gains of using a dishwasher?

[deleted]

Re: A socialite who hated washing dishes invented the automated dishwasher

#208

Post by 0xffff2 » Wed, Oct 07, 2020, 8:45 PM UTC

novok wrote: post #206

sneak wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’ve been kicking around the idea of a proper commercial kitchen in the house I’m thinking of building in the next few years, and it seems like this is definitely the kind of stuff you need to plan the whole room around. That said, who doesn’t want a big gas griddle, serious fume hood exhaust, and a giant three door stainless fridge in their kitchen?! I’m so tired of smoke detectors going off when I try to cook a ste…

Does commercial kitchen equipment try via how it's designed to prevent smells from wafting around? I think if you want to prevent that you need doors on your kitchen and to not combine it with the dining space. Which is hard to find because most parties and social life revolves around the kitchen, so most people don't like that setup thus builders never build it. There is also the general trend to make houses into la…

Typically the cooking surfaces in a commercial kitchen are installed under an absolutely enormousness hood that sucks a lot of air. That is sufficient to greatly contain smoke. Not sure what smells have to do with anything.

Re: A socialite who hated washing dishes invented the automated dishwasher

#209

Post by organsnyder » Wed, Oct 07, 2020, 9:33 PM UTC

Xcelerate wrote: post #22

I find that recent models of dishwashers don’t work nearly as well as older models. They don’t heat up enough to dry water off of plastic, and the enzyme based detergents don’t seem to clean as well as the old phosphate detergents. Also, the dishwasher in our current apartment (a cheap Whirlpool) often leaves a wet dog smell on the glasses, and we can’t figure out where it comes from or how to get rid of it. Apparent…

Our newer Bosch unit is the best-performing unit we've ever owned. We do follow their instructions to always use rinse aid (it has an automatic dispenser that needs to be refilled every couple dozen cycles), as well as the recommended detergent (Finish Powerball tablets, which we happened to be using already). We scrape off as much food as we can into the compost, but we only rinse things when we know they'll be problematic if they dry out before we run it (such as bread dough, eggs. etc.).

Yeah, it takes a few hours to run, but it's so quiet for most of the cycle we need to rely on the status LED to know it's running. We usually start it right before we go to bed (or better yet, set the timer after dinner so that we don't forget but can still load in dishes from a late snack or whatever).

Re: A socialite who hated washing dishes invented the automated dishwasher

#210

Post by sjg007 » Thu, Oct 08, 2020, 12:15 AM UTC

ehonda wrote: post #152

prawn wrote: post #147

It amazes me that after widespread adoption of dishwashers, we still build very customised bathrooms into houses that require manual labour to clean each surface - tiles/grout, basins, benchtops, toilets, floors, etc. A bathroom that could be sealed and cleaned as though it was a dishwasher would be great. For everything but the toilet, lightly pressured spray of hot water would probably be sufficient. Throw the towe…

That's how I remodeled my bathroom. I opted against materials that require grout lines, among other things. It looks boring and utilitarian but its a hell of a lot easier to clean.

Giant fiberglass bathroom?