toggleswitch1
Well-known member
- Joined
- Feb 25, 2008
- Messages
- 170
Ya know Nate has actually "Frankensteined-up" a DW, as we saw in Tucson, AZ.............
Now where is that pic of it.....
Now where is that pic of it.....
Improving the GE
- Thread starter roto204
- Start date
Help Support :
Now where is that pic of it.....
Right here.....
Right here.....
Dishwasher
In action......
In action......
Very Clever Nate! Thanks for posting, good to see you back in action.
mrcleanjeans
New member
Kewl! Reminds me of the YK's Jet Tower
toggleswitch1
Well-known member
- Joined
- Feb 25, 2008
- Messages
- 170
Playing leads to development of social skills and mechanical
~What was the point of doing that?
Excercising creativity and engineering skills.
Well it certainly entertained the masses at the TUCSON, AZ wash-in.............
~What was the point of doing that?
Excercising creativity and engineering skills.
Well it certainly entertained the masses at the TUCSON, AZ wash-in.............
LOL
Sorry for dropping off, guys. LOL, Greg--I'm telling you!
The new KA works really well--I need to land it a new set of racks someday--the previous owner was a little tough on them, or else the vinyl was a little thin on the tines (or both)...that, and I get the impression she washed a lot of knives in the top rack sharp-side down. C'est la vie. It's weird to have a dishwasher where dirty dishes go in and clean things come out, though.
Togs and Gary--you're so fab! I'd damned near forgotten about that pseudo-Youngstown-Kitchens dishwasher we'd made for the wash-in.
The original idea was that Roger and I tried to engineer a spin-tube dishwasher a la Frigidaire, and see what would happen. (Yes, Greg, it would come pre-packed with a dish brush ;-) )
The problem was finding a bearing for the spin-tube that was both water-tight and allowed the horizontal tube to spin freely while pressurized. You can see, in the pic of the dishwasher not running, the tube through the back that originally diverted all the water from what was a plain GE dishwasher's pump all the way up to the top rack.
The main problem was that--as we found--Frigidaire's original method for mounting and securing the spin-tube was probably the best (no doubt they settled on that design for a reason, and equally undoubtedly, they did do a lot of R&D to get there, so...). However, it's hard to duplicate with plastic. Plastic expands and contracts, changes characteristics throughout the cycle as the water gets warmer and the interior does to, and we basically ran into a lot of binding issues.
When we weren't battling binding problems, we found that the back bearing tended to fan water out the back depending on how good the seal was, and you ran into two opposing issues: 1.) The seal is too good, and the tube binds when trying to spin, or 2.) The seal is poor, and you lose all the water pressure to drive your spray tube out the back of the bearing.
That, and the GE pump was tremendously anemic, and didn't provide a lot of pressure--if you remove the wash arm assembly from a GE dishwasher with a full charge of water, and run it with the door open, the pump will lob the water about four inches high. It actually looks more like a water feature. (You certainly won't get wet.)
Roger came up with a brilliant design wherein a sub-tube was mounted inside the spin-tube (it was about 1/8" smaller), and it had a honeycomb of slots cut in it, wherein the water would enter this sub-tube and pressurize the spin-tube. The result was a sort of hovercraft "cushion of water" between the inner and outer tube. This worked except when the holes in the outer tube passed over the slots and holes in the inner tube, whereupon an area of reduced pressure was created, and--bonk! The outer tube rubbed on the inner tube.
Short of machining a metal mechanism (which we didn't want to do, because the fun of that dishwasher was producing something keeping with the present materials, cost, performance, and market as current machines), we decided to rethink and go vertical.
The vertical tube utilized the original wash-arm support from the GE, which greatly simplified the mechanism by replacing our avant-garde bearing designs with something that actually, well, worked. The tube extended to a simple flatwasher bearing and bolt in the roof of the machine, which allowed it to spin in place (and, much to our chagrin, required frequent oiling to permit it to do so).
To accommodate the now-vertical tube and allow the racks to still pull out, I cut out the rack hump in the bottom rack with a hacksaw, and resealed the vinyl. I also had to cut out an equivalent section of the top rack.
A series of helical holes were drilled in the PVC to spray the dishes--I don't think I could legally say "wash." (The next major annoyance was having the holes plug-up with PVC shavings left on the inside of the spray tube. We used a piece of metal trim off a KitchenAid to ream all the trimmings out--how appropriate!)
Initial testing showed that it was too difficult to cant the jets in the tube sufficiently in plastic to provide good spray directionality, and thus, drive the spin motion of the tube. Metal flanges were attached to the spray tube to deflect four of the jets and were bent at an angle to help with this effect. The resulting deflected water was successful in applying a force sufficient to spin the tube (and these flanges were at the silverware-basket level, so the added bonus was getting a little extra Silver Shower action ;-) ).
The final addition was a constant-rinse unit up top, fashioned out of sheet-metal and screwed to the tank top, and rather like KitchenAid's little spinny units. This constant rinse was driven off the port intended for such on the GE pump, and the water was just directed down and into the top of the tank, wherein the constant-rinse deflected the water and (sort of) rotated.
All told, it was frickin' ridiculous, because:
-- You ended up with a Youngstown Kitchens dishwasher--already rated the best in history--but minus the racking intended for it.
-- You lost a huge amount of rack space because you had to accommodate cutouts for the tower.
-- The water pressure was low enough to make the top few jets of the tower pretty useless, so the constant rinse was critical. Poor filtration made good water coverage crucial, and plugged jets (due to food particles lodging in them) caused trouble.
-- The top bearing fouled-up all the time, and needed oiling (can you imagine oiling your dishwasher??). If one of the propulsion jets with the metal flange got a chunk of food stuck in it, the spray tube would stop rotating. (This near-stationary-but-wanting-desperately-to-rotate behavior was charmingly termed by onlookers as "TurboZone action.")
-- The behavior of the spray tube changed as the cycle progressed and the thermal properties of the spray tube and dishwasher tank changed.
-- Since all water originated from the center, this machine had to be loaded circularly like an impeller dishwasher. (Only you couldn't use the back of the rack.)
Overall, fun and educational to construct, and let's face it, anything is more entertaining with a Plexiglas door.
But I have a lot more respect for what Leslie deals with now ;-) I don't think we're going to go notch-out any marketshare with this design--even though it would be appropriately cost-competitive--I think it did cost about $25 to convert the GE entirely to the new design!
Sorry for dropping off, guys. LOL, Greg--I'm telling you!
The new KA works really well--I need to land it a new set of racks someday--the previous owner was a little tough on them, or else the vinyl was a little thin on the tines (or both)...that, and I get the impression she washed a lot of knives in the top rack sharp-side down. C'est la vie. It's weird to have a dishwasher where dirty dishes go in and clean things come out, though.Togs and Gary--you're so fab! I'd damned near forgotten about that pseudo-Youngstown-Kitchens dishwasher we'd made for the wash-in.
The original idea was that Roger and I tried to engineer a spin-tube dishwasher a la Frigidaire, and see what would happen. (Yes, Greg, it would come pre-packed with a dish brush ;-) )
The problem was finding a bearing for the spin-tube that was both water-tight and allowed the horizontal tube to spin freely while pressurized. You can see, in the pic of the dishwasher not running, the tube through the back that originally diverted all the water from what was a plain GE dishwasher's pump all the way up to the top rack.
The main problem was that--as we found--Frigidaire's original method for mounting and securing the spin-tube was probably the best (no doubt they settled on that design for a reason, and equally undoubtedly, they did do a lot of R&D to get there, so...). However, it's hard to duplicate with plastic. Plastic expands and contracts, changes characteristics throughout the cycle as the water gets warmer and the interior does to, and we basically ran into a lot of binding issues.
When we weren't battling binding problems, we found that the back bearing tended to fan water out the back depending on how good the seal was, and you ran into two opposing issues: 1.) The seal is too good, and the tube binds when trying to spin, or 2.) The seal is poor, and you lose all the water pressure to drive your spray tube out the back of the bearing.
That, and the GE pump was tremendously anemic, and didn't provide a lot of pressure--if you remove the wash arm assembly from a GE dishwasher with a full charge of water, and run it with the door open, the pump will lob the water about four inches high. It actually looks more like a water feature. (You certainly won't get wet.)
Roger came up with a brilliant design wherein a sub-tube was mounted inside the spin-tube (it was about 1/8" smaller), and it had a honeycomb of slots cut in it, wherein the water would enter this sub-tube and pressurize the spin-tube. The result was a sort of hovercraft "cushion of water" between the inner and outer tube. This worked except when the holes in the outer tube passed over the slots and holes in the inner tube, whereupon an area of reduced pressure was created, and--bonk! The outer tube rubbed on the inner tube.
Short of machining a metal mechanism (which we didn't want to do, because the fun of that dishwasher was producing something keeping with the present materials, cost, performance, and market as current machines), we decided to rethink and go vertical.
The vertical tube utilized the original wash-arm support from the GE, which greatly simplified the mechanism by replacing our avant-garde bearing designs with something that actually, well, worked. The tube extended to a simple flatwasher bearing and bolt in the roof of the machine, which allowed it to spin in place (and, much to our chagrin, required frequent oiling to permit it to do so).
To accommodate the now-vertical tube and allow the racks to still pull out, I cut out the rack hump in the bottom rack with a hacksaw, and resealed the vinyl. I also had to cut out an equivalent section of the top rack.
A series of helical holes were drilled in the PVC to spray the dishes--I don't think I could legally say "wash." (The next major annoyance was having the holes plug-up with PVC shavings left on the inside of the spray tube. We used a piece of metal trim off a KitchenAid to ream all the trimmings out--how appropriate!)
Initial testing showed that it was too difficult to cant the jets in the tube sufficiently in plastic to provide good spray directionality, and thus, drive the spin motion of the tube. Metal flanges were attached to the spray tube to deflect four of the jets and were bent at an angle to help with this effect. The resulting deflected water was successful in applying a force sufficient to spin the tube (and these flanges were at the silverware-basket level, so the added bonus was getting a little extra Silver Shower action ;-) ).
The final addition was a constant-rinse unit up top, fashioned out of sheet-metal and screwed to the tank top, and rather like KitchenAid's little spinny units. This constant rinse was driven off the port intended for such on the GE pump, and the water was just directed down and into the top of the tank, wherein the constant-rinse deflected the water and (sort of) rotated.
All told, it was frickin' ridiculous, because:
-- You ended up with a Youngstown Kitchens dishwasher--already rated the best in history--but minus the racking intended for it.
-- You lost a huge amount of rack space because you had to accommodate cutouts for the tower.
-- The water pressure was low enough to make the top few jets of the tower pretty useless, so the constant rinse was critical. Poor filtration made good water coverage crucial, and plugged jets (due to food particles lodging in them) caused trouble.
-- The top bearing fouled-up all the time, and needed oiling (can you imagine oiling your dishwasher??). If one of the propulsion jets with the metal flange got a chunk of food stuck in it, the spray tube would stop rotating. (This near-stationary-but-wanting-desperately-to-rotate behavior was charmingly termed by onlookers as "TurboZone action.")
-- The behavior of the spray tube changed as the cycle progressed and the thermal properties of the spray tube and dishwasher tank changed.
-- Since all water originated from the center, this machine had to be loaded circularly like an impeller dishwasher. (Only you couldn't use the back of the rack.)
Overall, fun and educational to construct, and let's face it, anything is more entertaining with a Plexiglas door.
But I have a lot more respect for what Leslie deals with now ;-) I don't think we're going to go notch-out any marketshare with this design--even though it would be appropriately cost-competitive--I think it did cost about $25 to convert the GE entirely to the new design!
wow, cool. i like that stuff.
thanks for the explanation.
i had a Haier dishwasher in my last apartment. Some might remember it. It was a bastard child of GE and Whirlpool engineering, born in China.
They had a WP style wash arm with a GE power tower.
The stupid Chinese angled the WP style jets too much inward. So I bent them out more and got much better action.
The Chinese also did something stupid where they made the jets on the outward facing ends of the wash arm too small. So they'd clog with food and nothing on the outter perimeter would get clean. So i drilled them out
Modifying is fun.
About the GE pump. From looking at the impeller design, it looks like it's designed for high volume and not pressure. It looks more like a boat prop than a proper impeller.
I think that's always been GE's strategy. Just a few very large fanned out jets. Don't need much of a pump for that.
thanks for the explanation.
i had a Haier dishwasher in my last apartment. Some might remember it. It was a bastard child of GE and Whirlpool engineering, born in China.
They had a WP style wash arm with a GE power tower.
The stupid Chinese angled the WP style jets too much inward. So I bent them out more and got much better action.
The Chinese also did something stupid where they made the jets on the outward facing ends of the wash arm too small. So they'd clog with food and nothing on the outter perimeter would get clean. So i drilled them out
Modifying is fun.
About the GE pump. From looking at the impeller design, it looks like it's designed for high volume and not pressure. It looks more like a boat prop than a proper impeller.
I think that's always been GE's strategy. Just a few very large fanned out jets. Don't need much of a pump for that.
toggleswitch1
Well-known member
- Joined
- Feb 25, 2008
- Messages
- 170
Modifying is fun.
*LOL*
You know you are trusted and loved by your mother when the oven of her gas stove won't light, you go in there with a drill and a bit, and she doesn't even leave the room!!!!
FEH! I tried adding a few small holes to the upper spray arm of my now defunct and GONE KA mess, without any great results I'm thinking it made already anemic pressure even worse.
Nate you have talent, boy! Somehow it figures that you got the vertical tower to spew good quantities, and get the job done.
*LOL*
You know you are trusted and loved by your mother when the oven of her gas stove won't light, you go in there with a drill and a bit, and she doesn't even leave the room!!!!
FEH! I tried adding a few small holes to the upper spray arm of my now defunct and GONE KA mess, without any great results I'm thinking it made already anemic pressure even worse.
Nate you have talent, boy! Somehow it figures that you got the vertical tower to spew good quantities, and get the job done.
