5 ms·

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 plat

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.

HelloNurse 3mo ago
It can be accurately simulated with appropriate brushes and rags, water and soap, and a sufficient number of hands.
afandian 3mo ago
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?
askvictor 3mo ago
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.
- briHass 3mo ago
  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.
  - TowerTall 3mo ago
    I used to have two dishwashers. One for clean. One for dirty.
  - wgd 3mo ago
    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.
- Sheeny96 3mo ago
  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
  - Skwid 3mo ago
    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.
    - fragmede 3mo ago
Waterluvian 3mo ago
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 3mo ago
  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 3mo ago
    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 3mo ago
      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 3mo ago
        So sell small scale scullery, sink, storage and sorting systems to save and subvert storage solutions.
chasd00 3mo ago
The answer is obviously paper plates and plastic silverware /s
- BobBagwill 3mo ago
  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
  - fragmede 3mo ago
    If you're going to optimize that, move over to Soylent or Huel. Instead of preparing food and eating it, it's more efficient to mix powder with water, and for people to drink the resulting slurry. As long as that mix has all the things a body needs, you're all set. No mess!
- ValentineC 3mo ago
  [dead]
Leonard_of_Q 3mo ago
> 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.
aequitas 3mo ago
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.
- AstroJetson 3mo ago
  I have a friend whos kitchen is almost the size of my apartment. They have a "dish" dishwasher and a "glass" dishwasher with different inside configurations. Woe to me that only has a sink and loaded into the wrong dishwasher. (They also have a fridge and then two pull out drawer units, one is for keeping extra snacks frozen things (like ice, ice cream, juice etc.) and the other is for veggie / meat.)
- mejutoco 3mo ago
  I feel like between plates, cups, pots, strainers etc for this to work I would need 4 or 5 dishwashers. Basically replacing each cupboard with cleanable utensils with a dishwasher. With 2 dishwashers one would use some clean plates and maybe leave some pots behind that would not be used for a while. In practice, these would need to be emptied. It is a great idea if one uses only one dishwasher worth of utensils though. I think of those toilet modules in japan where you can clean the whole bathroom with a hose. Maybe what we need are self cleaning cupboards.
mhb 3mo ago
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 3mo ago
  Too bad the government demands you prioritize the latter
jason_s 3mo ago
That's called a Hobart. https://www.hobartcorp.com/products/commercial-dishwashers 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 3mo ago
  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...
chairmansteve 3mo ago
I quite frequently just rinse my plate or cup under the tap and put it on the drying rack. Instant!

HelloNurse 3mo ago

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

afandian 3mo ago

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?

askvictor 3mo ago

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.

briHass 3mo ago
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.
- TowerTall 3mo ago
  I used to have two dishwashers. One for clean. One for dirty.
- wgd 3mo ago
  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.
Sheeny96 3mo ago
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
- Skwid 3mo ago
  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.
  - fragmede 3mo ago

Waterluvian 3mo ago

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 3mo ago
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 3mo ago
  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 3mo ago
    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 3mo ago
      So sell small scale scullery, sink, storage and sorting systems to save and subvert storage solutions.

chasd00 3mo ago

The answer is obviously paper plates and plastic silverware /s

BobBagwill 3mo ago
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
- fragmede 3mo ago
  If you're going to optimize that, move over to Soylent or Huel. Instead of preparing food and eating it, it's more efficient to mix powder with water, and for people to drink the resulting slurry. As long as that mix has all the things a body needs, you're all set. No mess!
ValentineC 3mo ago
[dead]

Leonard_of_Q 3mo ago

> 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.

aequitas 3mo ago

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.

AstroJetson 3mo ago
I have a friend whos kitchen is almost the size of my apartment. They have a "dish" dishwasher and a "glass" dishwasher with different inside configurations. Woe to me that only has a sink and loaded into the wrong dishwasher. (They also have a fridge and then two pull out drawer units, one is for keeping extra snacks frozen things (like ice, ice cream, juice etc.) and the other is for veggie / meat.)
mejutoco 3mo ago
I feel like between plates, cups, pots, strainers etc for this to work I would need 4 or 5 dishwashers. Basically replacing each cupboard with cleanable utensils with a dishwasher. With 2 dishwashers one would use some clean plates and maybe leave some pots behind that would not be used for a while. In practice, these would need to be emptied. It is a great idea if one uses only one dishwasher worth of utensils though. I think of those toilet modules in japan where you can clean the whole bathroom with a hose. Maybe what we need are self cleaning cupboards.

mhb 3mo ago

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 3mo ago
Too bad the government demands you prioritize the latter

jason_s 3mo ago

That's called a Hobart. https://www.hobartcorp.com/products/commercial-dishwashers 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 3mo ago
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...

chairmansteve 3mo ago

I quite frequently just rinse my plate or cup under the tap and put it on the drying rack. Instant!