Mine has a filter screen as well, but all kinds of "crap" gets through anyhow. The most annoying are little pieces of plastic film that go through and clog the exit holes of the top/bottom rotating sprayers. Can't complain though - its going on 14-15 years and still does the job as long as it gets a routine clean-out.
My experience with broken glass in a standard (builder's grade) dishwasher is that large enough pieces of glass can get in and destroy the pump, shearing off most of the vanes on the plastic impeller!
Found the glass, found most of the impeller blades, never did figure out how the glass got through the screens to the pump.
@jmillion: Yes, like the "warm hidey-holes" in my swimming pool pump motor! The thing is black, of course, sitting in the sun, and close to the ground. It started making an awful racket, so I brought it down to my workshop to see if I could fix it. I hadn't gotten much more than the back cover off when out comes an 8-inch long garter snake! Boy, did I jump! Fortunately, all I screamed was "AHHH!" and it only took a moment to grab "Gregory" (as my son has since named "him") with a pair of pliers, run upstairs, and deposit him in the woods.
I put a piece of vectorboard over the vent holes after that.
Squirrels seem to love to chew on vinyl. They've gnawed through a heavy vinyl birdseed container. Far worse was when they gnawed the insulation from the low-voltage wiring to my heat pump, causing continuous compressor start-stop cycling. The compressor wasn't designed for that and failed, necessitating replacement of the entire unit, costing a few thousand dollars.
Needless to say, the current unit has the low-voltage wiring run inside steel-jacketed "Greenfield" tubing.
Good comments, John. Kudos for attributing "debug" properly to Grace Hopper.
My company makes electronic equipment for use throughout the world. The gear used particularly in the more tropical climates is often assailed by various and sundry "vermin". It's often a design consideration; water ingress is one thing, but is it vermin-proof? Ha! Maybe the most unusual incident occurred when we brought a pallet of gear into the factory for rework from the field. A lady opened up the housing of one unit to find a 6" long snake! True, it was dessicated and no threat, but still quite shocking (pun intended). Critters always seem to seek out warm hidey-holes.
I know this is a little off topic, but I heard a story of a grizzly bear getting into a high voltage power line. The story turns out to be true and with a little surfing you can find pictures of a grizzly bear that dug up a high voltage power line. I always wondered if the hum made him think the cable was somehow linked to a bee hive.
Another interesting critter is the ant. When I lived "out in the country", ants swarmed the contactor on my air conditioning unit, rendering it useless. Also got into the telephone junction box outside and disrupted it, too.
That is interesting information about the origins of de-bugging. I guess that bugs have been around a long time and continue to pester all different ways.
It's not unusual for bugs to be attracted to dishwashers because dishwashers are moist and warm. Unfortunately, I don't know what design engineers can do to prevent them from getting in, though.
New versions of BASF's Ecovio line are both compostable and designed for either injection molding or thermoforming. These combinations are becoming more common for the single-use bioplastics used in food service and food packaging applications, but are still not widely available.
Andrew Morris designed a circuit that could detect a stroke victim's groan and convert the sound into a signal so caregivers would know when help was needed.
New disc magnet motors fit into the design trend of stepping up to closed loop performance while maintaining the cost advantage of stepper motor technology.
At the Design News webinar on June 27, learn all about aluminum extrusion: designing the right shape so it costs the least, is simplest to manufacture, and best fits the application's structural requirements.
From Dell / Intel® New Paradigms in Design Work Scott Hamilton, vertical market strategist for Dell Precision workstations, 5/2/2013 5
Early in my career, I worked as a draftsman and remember the days of drawing on vellum with numbered pencils and Mylar with plastic lead. This was a fun experience in the sense that I ...
I've been using workstations for more than 10 years and love finding ways to get more performance from my system. With demanding professional applications that require more power each ...
A lasting memory from my first job as an engineer in an auto assembly plant is standing on hard concrete at six in the morning, vending-machine coffee clutched in hand, listening to ...
For industrial control applications, or even a simple assembly line, that machine can go almost 24/7 without a break. But what happens when the task is a little more complex? That’s where the “smart” machine would come in. The smart machine is one that has some simple (or complex in some cases) processing capability to be able to adapt to changing conditions. Such machines are suited for a host of applications, including automotive, aerospace, defense, medical, computers and electronics, telecommunications, consumer goods, and so on. This radio show will show what’s possible with smart machines, and what tradeoffs need to be made to implement such a solution.
To save this item to your list of favorite Design News content so you can find it later in your Profile page, click the "Save It" button next to the item.
If you found this interesting or useful, please use the links to the services below to share it with other readers. You will need a free account with each service to share an item via that service.
Tweet This
0 
