So, Combo52 and I were talking the other day

[jetcone]

We were discussing lint removal in washing machines. He conjectured that all lint removal systems were gimmicks and probably didn't really do anything. In fact he speculated that in the GE Filter Flo system if you were to actually take lint from a dryer and put it in the filter pan and then do a load of clothes ,-there would be less lint at the end of the cycle.

He said the pan would probably loose the dryer lint into the wash and it most of it would go down the drain.

 

Well, I got thinking , especially after growing up with one of these Filter Flos. So I decided to put that conjecture to the test. Here documented are the results.

 

We start with lint from the Speed Queen dryer - I have assayed it with the scale I use for creating detergent formulas, yes its accurate enough for our purposes.

We find I swiped 1.8 grams of lint.

 

 

[jetcone]

Next I carefully

distributed the lint around the clean pan so to balance it out.

 

Detergent was added. Artemis' dog blankets are the wash item.

 

We used OMO for our Australian friends and relations.

 

[jetcone]

To fair

the 1970 GE has a powerful flume, so I dampened down the lint before starting wash to prevent the flume from causing the dry lint to skate out of the pan at start!

 

 

[jetcone]

Let the cycle commence

Here is the self explanatory film strip:

<iframe width="853" height="480" src="" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>

 

[jetcone]

Tomorrow or Friday

I will reveal the outcome after the lint has time to dry properly.

In the meantime - DISCUSS,

What do YOU think will be the result??

Jet

 

[whirlcool]

I think you will have more lint in the GE lint catcher than you started with. Especially if you are washing a dog bed. When my parents had a GE Filterflow after washing dog beds the filter basket was always full of hair.

 

[toploader55]

OMDDBJ !!!

What have you started with MS ?

It's cool how the center of the Mammoth FF Pan collects and displays the condition of the water before it filters and sifts the schmutz out of the water.

That is a smooth running machine. They always have had a soothing sound.

So KA DW filters would be an illusion too ???

 

[rberryiii3]

Lint

Wow.......I love this site......there will be more lint

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Unimatic1140]

I agree I bet there will be more lint. If this GE spun as fast as the early 1947-1950 GE washers I would be more curious to see if that lint gets spun out of the pan, but at 625rpm it should stay put.

 

[ovrphil]

Not to suggest this isn't a fun test, but wouldn't it be a little more "scientific" or challenging to compare how two different machines will extract lint, since lint removers actually work? I know ours does, on our humble Maytags. Technically, if you're not adding clothes to a lint-filter that captured (or had placed in it) balls of lint...water and soap will dissipate the lint. Water can cut through anything, as you know - esp. applied to cutting tools. Anyways - if a GE Filter-Flo is known to lose some of the lint in some cycle of wash, what are you really doing, other than using a very sensitive(electronic) scale to measure the miniscule loss of threads, etc. in a lint-ball captured in that filter? I have no idea, on the other hand, if a left-in-place lint ball(after a normal wash of clothes) will simply ride over the top and be extracted into the wash again. If that's the case, I'd say GE needed to insure that the lint balls could withstand two, three or more daily washes, without advising to remove them. Guessing only - I'll say, given that it was designed to hold the lint balls and you're not adding more wash/texitles to increase the size or number of lint balls in the filter, they'll remain with some immeasurable (unless you have a great scale)amount of textile/crud/whatever is in those lint-balls. !

Funny, prior to coming to this thread, I just watched an old GE Fjlter Flo ad that Technopolis posted around Feb.2013 when he bought that Filter-Flo and Ronald Regan did the lead-in for the commercial. The ad was expounding upon the virtues and effectiveness of the filter-flo lint-capturing ability.

Phil

PS -I've entered a new level of decrepitation here..since lint-balls strike me as funny

and is it lint basket or lint filter? I mean basket,but isn't it a filter? It's late, zzzz my head is full of lint[this post was last edited: 5/8/2013-22:43]

 

[mickeyd]

"It puts the dog in the basket."

Yelling: "It puts the dog in the basket." Jamie Gumb

My belly's wiggling.

I've heard John's other verrsion: 'It puts the lint into the wash basket, not into the filter." Then see what comes up.

 

[tomturbomatic]

I understand or misunderstand that GE put the solid dish in the center of the filter pan to accommodate the depth of the softener dispenser and so that the fabric softener spun out of the dispenser would not drip into the tub before it was diluted or mixed by the FilterFlo stream. From the deposits on the rim of the pan, however, it seems to be too shallow. Maybe it was a way of saving on plastic to only make the center of the pan deep. We never had stuff like that climb so high out of our deeper FF pans which were deep enough to handle the volume and turbulance of the FF stream as well as contain the lint in the spin.

I think lint filters were more important before most homes had a dryer and that largely came about because dryers were necessary for successful wrinkle-free processing of permapress, but I think you could produce lint free washes without a filter in the washer as long as the load was dried in a dryer as opposed to hanging on a line. The movement of the clothes in a dryer is better at removing lint than line drying where the clothes do not repeatedly move against each other even if they flap somewhat in a breeze. I realize that advocates of line drying will dispute that.[this post was last edited: 5/9/2013-08:59]

 

[recyclewasher]

at a certain point in the clip, the

Video artistic direction made a dramatic tribute to 2 tv shows and 2 movies i.e.

Star Trek, Pigs in Space and The Matrix / 300,

After That scene, I found myself drifting away from what the FF was doing.

And at the end, the direction changed again to Jaws.

What video program are you using for these special effects?? They really send you back in time...

 

[jetcone]

Im not sure

what parts you are referring to recycle, do you have a time stamp?

 

 

Ahhh, said the Romulan Commander..Recycle-- I think you are referring to the Transitions I used? they are all bundled with iMovie.

 

 

 

 

 

[yogitunes]

I love these Alien references......

By company orders......We set down on LV426(filter pan) to get this hostile organism(lint), which destroyed my crew(clothing) and your expensive ship(machine), said Ripley!

We had families without dryers for years on LV426, and they never complained about any hostile organism.........little planet engineers, who pick the lint off the clothing while its washing!........It's what we call a Shake N' Bake colony!

(duck and run Scotty!)

 

[ovrphil]

Remulan is doomed

..and in another corner of the universe:

 

[kb0nes]

I think the outcome will be interesting but I don't get the point of the test. I think its invalid.

The idea is that weight of the starting lint in the filter pan will reduce due to loss from potentially ineffective filtering seems to be the premise.

But then an undetermined amount of weight of lint and hair is added into the cycle. So its anybodies guess. To me this invalidates the test, unless I am missing the initial point.

My assumption is that the finer lint from the dryer will indeed slip through the filter and go down the drain. The composition of the accumulated lint after the load will change. Purely a guess but I think it will weight more after. With only 1.8 grams of very dry lint initially, it will be important that the post weighing is done with equal dry lint.

I'd be curious to see the results of this test with no additional lint/hair introduced into the cycle. I would guess you'd lose a fair bit of the dryer lint, but I'm not sure its a fair test as I am assuming that this lint is finer and less likely to be filtered out.

My personal belief is different from my John's, I think lint filters in the wash help. Annette's family does their wash in a fairly late model Amana and they get LOTS of pilling on fleece etc. I have a feeling if they had washer with good lint filtering the pilling would be greatly reduced. Even in my belt drive WP I have never had pilling like that, granted we have many other variables that aren't normalized.

 

[turquoisedude]

I think there will be more lint. The ol' Viking filter-flo that was my first 'big' automatic proved this a couple of times when someone was too out of it to remember to remove the lint from the filter pan from a previous load. It seems to me that there was always more lint after a new load was washed... Oh and the clothes washed in that new load were not 're-linted'.

Anxiously awaiting the outcome!

 

[foraloysius]

I agree with the opinion that this test is not very scientific. Perhaps you should save up some lint, say from twenty washes or so, and then put it in the washer with water only, no clothes. With such a test you can see how much lint is picked up by the filter system.

 

[mrb627]

Screen Holes

Aren't the filtering holes in the FF pan finer than the holes in the dryer filter? I would expect more lint in the PAN than before you started.

Malcolm

 

[mrb627]

Real Test

I guess the real test would be to drop the dryer lint in with the wash and see if the FF can sort it out of the load...

Malcolm

 

[jetcone]

Huh?

Interesting comments

 

Don't know what this means  "With only 1.8 grams of very dry lint initially, it will be important that the post weighing is done with equal dry lint. " If I picked 1.8 grams to start and then picked 1.8 grams from the filter pan I'd have 1.8 grams. One needs to weigh ALL the lint left in the filter pan if this is to have meaning.

 

Very scientific , Louis,  but not statistically meaningful. One would have to run this 1,000 times to get a baseline, then calculate the mean and standard deviation.  Someone else can do that.

 

If you read the original premise it was surmised that lint taken from the dryer would not make it thru the wash cycle to the end, it would be drained out, and that the filtering system was so poor that it was a marketing gimmick, thus implying that of any lint in the clothing most of it would not be caught by the filtering system. So simply if the lint is loaded from the dryer THEN at the end there will either be less or more lint in the pan. If less than the speculation was correct , if more then the speculation does not match real world FF washing.

 

 




[this post was last edited: 5/9/2013-21:02]

 

[mickeyd]

I never forget for one minute how smart you are, Jon.

Your films are becoming Rorschach Tests for us, with all the things we read into them. I'm way out on a limb, thinking of Jamie Gumb of "The Silence of the Lambs," whose frantic ravings, "It puts the lotion on its skin," etc. have become the stuff of comedy.

I would love to see you load up the GE with lint and see what the filter does with it.

 

[barcoboy]

I think another filter pan should be set up underneath the drain hose outlet to see how much lint is caught as the washer is draining.

 

[bajaespuma]

Favorite Shares: Almalgamated Lint

As much as I want to confirm the efficacy of the GE Filter-Flo system (I am as prejudiced PRO as Combo is prejudiced CON) I think I remember that Consumer's Reports measured "linting", the generation of lint from the washload, by different agitation systems in all the tested brands. It is possible that Filter-Flo's create at least as much lint as they trap. I also remember their snippy and niggardly observation that "loads washed in the General Electric machine somewhat more lint-free than most".

 

You would have to measure a load washed in a FF without the filter-pan in place and then wash an almost identical load with the filter pan in place. And then I'm afraid we would be dealing with the same phenomenon that the door-to-door vacuum salesman benefitted from; lint can always be gleaned from most cloth.

 

Now that I'm using a horizontal axis machine without a lint filter, I can't say I notice any difference whatsoever. Especially with loads that get the benefit of being dried in a machine. And isn't it true that the dryer filtration systems are more about keeping all the ducts lint-free and preventing lint build-up outside of the machine where it creates a significant fire hazard than preening lint off of the laundry?

 

[philr]

That's an interesting test! I think lint removal in the washer is important for those who wash things that shouldn't washed together and line dry them!

I like to mix loads of things that shouldn't be washed together and when I wash gray stockings with dark t-shirts, I always get gray lint on my t-shirts and need to send them in the dryer for a while as lint will remain very visible if I just line dry them! I guess the "lint away" overflow rinse of solid tub Frigidaire washers didn't do too good!

 

[jmirawm]

welll,

I think combo52 is jealous of Filter Flo's sexy pan

 

[jetcone]

All interesting points

Barcoboy, very good idea about the trap on the drain. That could be another type of test.

 

 

Ken, you bring up a good point, I never worry about lint out of the Speed Queen's nor the Duomatics, they just don't generate any appreciable lint and any they do the dryer takes away. 
I never knew what my Frigidaire's did as there was no way to measure. But the same load washed across the board in each machine with a catch on the drain might be very illuminating.

 

The lint is dry, it will be weighed tomorrow and the number posted!!!! Tick tick  tick...

 

 

[combo52]

Reduliclas Test

Jon if you want to do this test you have to run the washer empty, otherwise your test depends on the type of load that you are washing with the added lint. dud

 

We all know that FF washers do collect SOME lint, [ even the almost useless filter in MT Power-fin agitators collect some lint ] but the amount of lint collected would never make any real difference in the laundries outcome. And I never said that all automatic washers lint filters were useless, their were actually a few that really pretty worked very well. I would say from experience that the first GEs from the late 1940s with their Self-Cleaning filter were very effective as well as the first KM machines with the manual clean filters from 1956-around1966 and all the WP and KM SC filters on belt drive washers were highly effective. GEs first FF washers with the metal pans were also very effective as well as the first MTs with the SS filter with the rubber gasket at the bottom. I am sure I missed a few washers with effective filters, but most filters on washers other than the above were not effective enough to make any real difference.

 

[recyclewasher]

I'm leaning with Barcoboy's suggestion of

The 2nd filterflo pan under the drain hose while draining, but you

Might have to use a large funnel or maybe a bucket with a hole, then to the funnel over the ff pan to slow down the volume and speed of water coming out of the drain hose and overflowing the pan losing whatever lint that might be collected.

And thanks for the Imovie tipoff, I'll checkit out later, didn't mean to send the thread off kilter. I just got caught offguard by it and was thinking of the thought process of the cop at the end- (WTF!... Kaiser Soseg!) in The Usual Suspects, only you did it in the middle of the clip. Got a good chuckle from it and the coneheads too. Makes you wonder if IMovie can replicate the Enterprise's slideing door 'swishhh'