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sixtram 7 hours ago

Oh, I'm glad I don't work in the oven business. We're just starting a stealth startup that's revolutionizing dishwashers, and the prototypes are amazing. They use less water, less detergent, and this weekend we're hoping to solve the last remaining issue: occasionally, they break glasses.

quijoteuniv 4 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Oh, I’m glad I don’t work in the oven or dishwasher business. We’re just starting a stealth startup that’s revolutionizing coding assistants, and the prototypes are amazing. They write code faster, explain it better, and this weekend we’re hoping to solve the last remaining issue: occasionally, they deploy to production.

vntok an hour ago | parent [-]

This issue does not come from the coding assistant. In fact, humans will occasionally do the exact same thing as long as their tools have enough permissions to deploy to both local and prod from the same environment.

Fix it by separating the tools (different non-interconnected VMs, etc for dev/qa/preprod/prod environments) and the permissions (different accounts, sessions, tokens, etc for the run/debug/test/deploy loops).

flowerbreeze 6 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

It sounds like you're joking, but I've long dreamed of a different type of dishwasher. One that washes instantly. I don't need it to fit more than a single plate at one time. Just put something in from one end, and out comes clean and dry plate on the other end. Like a car wash.

I am quite certain these exist already large kitchens and I seem to remember one from a school diner from maybe 35 years ago, but I've always been wondering why they don't exist on smaller scale.

Waterluvian 5 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Restaurant dishwashers use an enormous amount of water. They require a hot water supply that’s much hotter than residential heaters typically supply. They require a more complete manual pre-rinse and scrub. They only accept kitchenware that’s made for them and destroy the rest.

Restaurants cycle dishes a lot during a single mealtime. Homes don’t. I don’t think “I can’t wait 2 hours” is typically a real problem.

Skwid 4 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Those I've used in the UK aren't so bad, they're cold fill only with a heating element in the sump. It takes maybe 15 minutes to fill and get up to temperature at the start of a shift, after that each cycle is ~2 minutes.

The hot water is recirculated during the wash, the rinse uses fresh water from the tap with the excess going out an overflow. A little sump water gets replaced every cycle, but enough stays that it's back up to temperature before you've emptied and refilled it. There's also a small peristaltic pump to top up the detergent directly from the bottle.

Not much benefit in a home setting unless you fancy having it hot and ready 24/7 though.

swiftcoder 4 hours ago | parent [-]

They also have the clever system of standardised, removable baskets. Need to increase dishwashing throughput? yank the clean basket, line them up on the counter to dry, and run a new basket through

This is probably the one trick consumer dishwashers should emulate

hilariously 3 hours ago | parent [-]

The problem in basically any consumer kitchen is storage - having racks and racks of stuff under your big stainless steel commercial countertops is no problem.

emj 2 hours ago | parent [-]

So sell small scale scullery, sink, storage and sorting systems to save and subvert storage solutions.

iterateoften 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Those Restaurant “dishwashers” are sanatizers. A dishwasher is a person in a restaurant. They are the ones removing and getting the dish clean.

Waterluvian 4 hours ago | parent [-]

Dishwashers? How dare you. We preferred to be called “Sanitation Engineers - Dishwashing Division” Even had bossman put it on our paystub (he was so tolerant of us kids. I think he was just happy that we were into buffoonery and not meth).

bckr 42 minutes ago | parent | next [-]

Engineer? Wow, that’s high falutin. Sanitation Technician is as high as I got.

vntok an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Dishwasher? I hardly know her!

fwipsy an hour ago | parent | prev [-]

Did this actually happen? That's pretty wholesome lmao.

Waterluvian 30 minutes ago | parent [-]

It was definitely one of the more tame activities at work. We would golf rotten potatoes into the field behind the restaurant. Play Celery Generals with traffic, make Concoctions and get the waitresses to test and rate them, and we had an entire WWF wrestling league (that was exclusively judged by the entrance strut and banter; there was never any actual wrestling). Sometimes we’d make new pizza recipes and present them to the kitchen staff of the pizza shop next door. Their contribution to the bit was to act incredibly Italian in their wholesale rejection of our pie. Sometimes we’d even do work.

doubleorseven an hour ago | parent | prev [-]

the real problem with home dishwasher is that it extend the duration of the task.

the task is prepare food, eat, clean. when you leave the kitchen and come back the next day the task is now different, its unpack, prepare,eat,clean.

you are constantly not finishing today's tasks. it lives to see another day. if you can fix it, bound it to the workflow, you will be a billionaire

jayd16 36 minutes ago | parent [-]

Easy. Just keep your dishes in the dishwasher instead of the shelf.

doubleorseven 2 minutes ago | parent [-]

oh yes, the two dishwashers solution

Leonard_of_Q 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

> I've always been wondering why they don't exist on smaller scale.

Because they need space, they need even more nasty chemicals than domestic dishwashers, they need a stack of trays to load the dishes on and a crew to load and unload them.

If you want a dishwasher which doesn't require unloading after use you can get 2 of them, one of which is "clean", the other "dirty" or washing. When the "dirty" one is full you turn it on and let it wash while you take whatever you need from the "clean" one. Once the formerly-dirty one has finished it's cycle the roles are reversed and it becomes the "clean" one.

jason_s an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-]

That's called a Hobart. https://www.hobartcorp.com/products/commercial-dishwashers

I've used these while working as a volunteer in a camp kitchen during work weekends, where we had maybe 20-40 guests eating a meal. You put dishes/silverware/pots/pans/whatever in a square tray, push it into one side of the Hobart, and pull down a lever to close the doors and start the cycle. They take a number of minutes that you can count on one hand... I seem to remember 90-120 seconds but I'm not sure. Stuff comes out clean and hot on the other side, and you want to pipeline this so it's one person with dirty hands feeding stuff in, and one person with clean hands (and thick gloves) pulling the square trays out, letting them cool, and putting the clean dishes/etc. away.

They release a huge amount of steam and they're wonderful for this kind of volume (20-40 people at a meal + all the cooking implements to support this). Larger than home use, though --- unless of course you had a mansion with servants. And I get the sense that maintenance and operating costs would be a lot higher than a regular plain dishwasher.

raddan an hour ago | parent [-]

When I was a teenager, my very first real job (after being a paperboy) was being a dishwasher in a popular local seafood restaurant. Minimum wage at the time was $4.25/hr but they offered me $5.50/hr. Boy howdy!

On one shift I was paired with a ex-convict. With the exception of the cooks themselves, most of the kitchen was staffed with high school students and ex-cons. The ex-con I was paired with was a dead ringer for Roger Daltry. I was on the "dirty" side and he was on the "hot" side (because there is a pecking order in even the worst jobs), and for some reason, he wanted _me_ to control the opening of the door. I think the reason is that this guy was high all the time and would space out unless something grabbed his attention. Anyway, I made the mistake of opening the door a bit too soon, when the machine was running, and it blasted this guy with steam. I remember him yelping in pain and then glaring at me angrily. One of the line cooks said something along the lines of "we try not to kill our dishwashers" which probably stopped the guy from punching me.

It's a beast of a machine. A little out of place in an ordinary household kitchen...

mhb 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I've dreamed of a dishwasher for people who prioritize clean dishes quickly and quietly over the incremental savings from using asymptotically less water or energy. See also low flush toilets and clothes washing machines.

theoreticalmal 3 hours ago | parent [-]

Too bad the government demands you prioritize the latter

askvictor 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I've long dreamed of a dishwasher that can detect when you remove the (cleaned) dishes from it, and presents a display saying 'load dishes' or something like that. And after finishing a cycle, says 'unload dishes'. Should be pretty easy to achieve with some load cells in the feet, but haven't seen any like that.

Sheeny96 4 hours ago | parent | next [-]

We had this at my old work, except it wasn't a display, it was a circular piece of paper with "clean" on one side and "dirty" on the other. When it was done, you rotate the paper so it was clean side up. Should we have gone for series A? It was a pretty great MVP after all, albeit manual, but automation of the paper flipping would of course come on the second iteration

an hour ago | parent | next [-]
[deleted]
klondike_klive 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I would for sure be that rookie who is paralysed with indecision over whether to read "clean" as an adjective or an imperative. Is it telling me that it's clean or that it needs cleaning?

Feathercrown 19 minutes ago | parent [-]

Given "dirty" would make a strange (although valid) imperative, it would likely be referring to the state of the dishes

Skwid 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

There's also the upgrade path of 2 dishwashers with a single 'clean' token moved between the two. Cupboards are an legacy product holding back progress.

DANmode 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Bezos has magnet versions.

briHass 5 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Many modern ones have a door open sensor that allows for the dishwasher to display that dishes are clean after a cycle until the door is opened and fully closed again.

That doesn't help, however, if users are lazy and don't unload the dishwasher after opening it to grab a clean plate or whatever.

It's a nice feature that can be added with existing sensors and one line of logic in the uC. Another one I noticed recently is garage door openers with the photo transmitter/receiver ('beam') to stop the door if someone blocks it can use that same beam to turn on the light if broken when the door is up. Handy if entering a dark garage from outside.

wgd 3 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Some dishwashers add a simple timer-based heuristic so if you open it for just a few seconds while you lazily grab something the "clean" indicator stays lit.

TowerTall 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

I used to have two dishwashers. One for clean. One for dirty.

afandian 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I don't know the first thing about dishwashers, but it seems obvious to me.

The cycle-to-volume ratio is as bad as it could possibly be. Conventional dishwashers recirculate water as they wash and rinse. I imagine there's an mx + c formula to how much water is needed (c = enough water to prime the pump or whatever). So compared to a normal size load, you'd be wasting that constant amount of water.

The wash is also likely going to follow mx+c (c = time for grease to break down, time to rinse, time to dry etc). You can wait a few hours for a whole set of crockery. Can you wait a few hours for a single plate?

Commercial "passthrough" dishwashers work very differently. Manual mechanical action with a spray, plus a quick wash, sterilise and rinse. At that point why not wash your single plate by hand?

aequitas 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

What you really want is 2 dishwashers! That way you never have to unload the dishwasher because you alternate your dishes between the two. The one that has just completed the cleaning cycle has now become a cupboard with the clean dishes and the other one becomes the dirty dish storage and vice versa.

HelloNurse 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

It can be accurately simulated with appropriate brushes and rags, water and soap, and a sufficient number of hands.

chasd00 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

The answer is obviously paper plates and plastic silverware /s

BobBagwill 3 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Then someone has to remember to buy them and take out the trash. The canonical solution is for you and your lazy roommates to eat straight from the pot over the sink. When done, fill the pot with water, to discourage the ants and roaches. Occasionally, you end up with a drowned ratling, but hey, wachagonna do?

One pot, no dishes. Each roommate has to keep track of their private spoon. Greedy "clever" roommate who shows up with a liter ladle triggers a spoon fight in the kitchen. Eating from pot by hand is corrected by rapping their knuckles with your spoons. Eventually, all the glassware ends up broken, and some bozo threw out all the used red solo cups, but luckily, the kitchen faucet has a spray attachment.

“Perfection is achieved, not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing left to take away.”

― Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, Airman's Odyssey

ValentineC 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

[dead]

jayd16 34 minutes ago | parent | prev | next [-]

In bars that cycle a lot of glassware they actually do seem to use high heat and break a lot of glasses. But it's fine, the restaurant just buys cheap (easily broken) glasses so it all works out.

4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]
[deleted]
Tyr42 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

That's handwashing right?

teiferer 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I hope you are planning for a rotating base as a core feature.

kordlessagain 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I'm 6'7".

I absolutely hate bending over to unload the dishwasher. When I open a dishwasher, it should slide out and lift itself to cabinet height. And it should just hold an entire bottle of detergent so I don't have to put it in each time.

DANmode 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Are you really doing this?

I’d like to speak with you, if so.

moffkalast 7 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I hope it's not the approach of using less water by not rinsing properly in the end, so people have to either eat soap or rinse everything manually afterwards, wasting far more water. I swear Bosch is so terrible at this.

afandian 6 hours ago | parent | next [-]

The innovation here is clearly edible soap.

And the 'less water' claim is technically correct, but it doesn't mention the decamethylcyclopentasiloxane. Just because it's complicated to spell, you understand.

broken-kebab 4 hours ago | parent | next [-]

>edible soap

Sodium bicarbonate residue won't kill our customers, so consider it technically edible. The issue of taste and efficiency will be approached after MVP

afandian 2 hours ago | parent [-]

Luckily our investors helped us out with the regulatory capture, so we don’t need to worry about the safety, just the palatability.

jodrellblank 6 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

from L'Affaire Siloxane? ( https://mceglowski.substack.com/p/laffaire-siloxane ) (subtitle: "How antiperspirant fumes nearly got NASA to evacuate the space station")

afandian 4 hours ago | parent [-]

Wow!

(No, from dry-cleaning)

pyrale 5 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Edible soap?! The solution is clearly edible dishes!

afandian 4 hours ago | parent [-]

Too late, already been done!

https://stroodles.co.uk/collections

I bought some edible cups out of curiosity a few years back. Nice for coffee. I did end up eating them all, although some of them were still dry at the time of consumption.

I think edible soap has better behaviour-adjusted shelf-life here.

tdeck 6 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Perhaps a match for the UK market? From what I've read they often don't rinse the soap off of dishes there (I wish I were making this up).

afandian 4 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Maybe it's the cause of our "bad teeth".

(I heard the rumour too. But no-one I know fails to rinse the "washing up liquid" (as we call it) off their plates)

camtarn 26 minutes ago | parent [-]

Sadly it's true. I've seen people just put the dishes in the dish rack and let the soap bubbles slide off them.

lmm 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

If there was enough soap residue to matter you'd notice the taste.

ericpauley 6 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Do you use rinse aid?

sfn42 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

I recently learned that you should add detergent for the pre-wash rinse as well. May dishwashers have a separate pocket next to the detergent pocket, often there isn't even a lid on it or the lid has openings so the detergent falls out as soon as you close the door. If they don't have the symbolic pocket you can just pour some extra detergent anywhere, like just spill some outside the main pocket or pour it into the bottom.

This allows the pre-wash cycle to get rid of most of the grease and stuff before the main cycle so the main cycle is more effective and the water is cleaner so the final rinse works better too.

euroderf 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

> less water, less detergent,

I achieve the first two goals by simply scrubbing+rinsing dishes after most uses and letting them dry. No glued-on food to go gnarly. They go thru the dishwasher once in a while. It's my personal strategy for being eco without getting food poisoning, but I've never seen a paper that evaluates this method in comparison to more-typical workflows (i.e. in-sink wash-using-soap or in-dishwasher wash-using-soap).