Fisher and Paykel

[growler_south]

The Fisher and Paykel DishDrawer: just how clever is it?

Having just repaired one I can say, VERY clever. With a few major engineering oversights.

The washer has 5 moving parts: the spray arm, a fan for drying dishes, two motors to close the lid, and the impeller pump.

The pump is genius: basically a giant stepper motor, the impeller is driven by a ring of electromagnets. Drive it forwards and it pumps to the sprayer arm, backwards and it drains the wash chamber.

Pulse it and you can measure water level by detecting the inertia. That's kind of clever.

The unit is programmed via an optical link on the front edge- which also doubles as a 'drawer closed' sensor. Clever.

The dishDrawer uses cold water, heating it internally by heating traces printed onto the lower plate, a bit like the rear windshield defroster in a car. DishDrawer monitors the current drawn by the heating element to deduce the temperature of the water. Clever.

Dish Drawer has a flooding/overflow sensor built into the chassis circuit board. Unfortunately, the flooding circuit is particularly susceptible to corrosion and damage caused by flooding. That's right, the circuit designed to alarm and protect the machine in the case of water damage is itself the most susceptible to water damage.

Not clever. Luckily, it's a $50 part, and the new circuit board comes dipped in water-resistant resin, so they've clearly figured out what goes wrong and fixed it.

Oh and the internal seals tend to go a little slack after a few years (at least on the earlier models) but are easily fixed by the careful application of Hylomar Blue jointing compound. If it's good enough for Rolls Royce, it's good enough for a DishDrawer.

Comments

[furr-a-bruin.livejournal.com]

Interesting... because without knowing much about them other than the fact they're relatively compact, a DishDrawer was what I figured I'd have in my Dream RV. ;) [Because if I can afford an RV, I can afford to not have to do dishes by hand.]

[greatbearmd.livejournal.com]

A friend of mine has a F&P dishwasher. It's been repaired at least three times under warranty, replaced once, and the replacement itself has needed repairs. Since they had the warranty on their side there was no out-of-pocket expenses, but the thing has been totally unreliable. I have no idea what had been going wrong, since they are the types who, when it comes to such things, can barely replace a light bulb much less understand what has gone wrong. Plus, they buy lots of service contracts. I guess this is one of those situations where it paid off, or will in the future.

[sinnabor.livejournal.com]

Yea, but if you enjoyed disassembling and analyzing your appliances... then the DishDrawer would be AWESOME!

[growler-south.livejournal.com]

No to mention how cheap and easy they are to repair!

Though it must be said that most failures are caused by incorrect operation. Overfill them and you break the lid closing mechanism and/or cause flooding. Use too much dishwash powder (a tablespoonful is about right) and you cause clogging of the vents and drains- leading to more flooding. Open the drawer midway through a cycle and the water on the lid drips onto the chassis: more flooding.

Admittedly, making the flood sensor susceptible to flooding was a bad move, as was not monitoring the power draw on the lid closing motors to detect overfilling. All fixed now though: waterproof flooding sensor board is $50 and the upgraded mainboard that monitors lid closing is $85.

Just a shame that it's necessary to engineer for idiots who don't read the instructions.

[sunsmogseahorse.livejournal.com]

You two were meant for each other.

Here, this is for the both of you.