Today, we solve another very important household issue.

How do we know if the dishes in the dishwasher are clean or dirty? Sure, we could open the dishwasher and inspect the contents for food remnants, but this is 2017 people, surely we must have the technology to streamline this task!

Prior to today I used a magnetic strip with handwritten Clean/Dirty on it. This worked ok, but it was getting dirty and near the end of it's life...

To the Bat Cave!

No, wrong one liner there...

To the computer to design something in CAD that we can 3D print!

More accurate but not as suave... Meh, we'll stick with it.

First design was just a simple Clean/Dirty text box with the words in different colors. But that was kind of boring.

Next I started down the path of combining a biohazard symbol on one side and a "clean" raindrop on the other side. But that didn't really look right either.

Then I took a break... While on the break I checked Facebook.

Ah Ha! Lets use the Thumbs Up symbol! That's simple and universal. This will work!

Back to the CAD, I quickly traced my hand and smoothed out the lines to make it more simplified. OK. We're on the right track. Next, added some holes for embedded magnets and then finished V1.0 of the design. To the 3D printer!

Bottom of the print, holes for the magnets are starting to take shape.

Magnets inserted.

First layer over the magnets.

Finished V1.0! Clean dishes! Probably need another top layer added so the magnets don't show through.

You can see the handwritten version was well past it's prime...

Alright, dishwasher dirty/clean crisis averted, onto the filament.

I bought some cheap yellow PLA from FoxSmart to prototype with. I picked yellow because it's not a color I use much and it would be easy to identify things that were still in work. I'm 50/50 on this filament right now.

Here's the Amazon link to the product http://amzn.to/2yGXGqo

Overall, this stuff prints OK. In the end I get a useful object. It is also really nice to easily identify an in work version of something vs. a final version. The FoxSmart yellow PLA is just very brittle and sometimes also shows inconsistent extrusion. With this filament I end up with random thin spots and it ends up breaking either near the extruder head or on the roll if I leave it on the machine more than a day. I store all my filament in sealed plastic bags with desiccant. My other PLA's from Hatchbox, Monoprice, Gizmo Dorks don't have the same problem. I'll probably give it another shot to make sure I didn't just get an oddball spool.

Version 2.0 is in the works. I'll make these available in the store once they're finished.