Flat-pack washing machine spins a fairer future
27 comments
·December 13, 2025tehwebguy
araes
It sounds kind of sarcastic, yet that was actually the personal thought also. Really sounds like its comparable to the amount of work with modern machines anyways. Couple minutes of hand cranking, and otherwise, approximately the same. Owned a modern washing machine for years, and not sure if I've ever used almost any of the settings or features other than, "load clothing on default, push start".
Probably sell well in a lot of developed world markets for people who just want to limit their electricity use, live away from the grid, have less reliance on complicated electronics, or minimize money use in an expensive society.
prirun
My Mom had a washer that did this. I told her to unplug it to soak overnight. That worked, but she hated that thing, sold it, and took my sister's older washer that didn't have any "we know better than you do" features.
syntaxing
Get a speed queen. Famous for being reliable because it’s a “dumb” machine (in a good way).
thatfrenchguy
Destroys your clothes and is mega inefficient in exchange. You can buy better washers than LG washers that are modern.
AngryData
Does being "inefficient" really matter for a washing machine if you don't live in the desert? Its not like they go through 100+ of gallons of water or ridiculous amounts of electricity even in the worst possible case scenarios.
jihadjihad
Nah, maybe the TC-5 could be argued to be relatively inefficient and pretty aggressive on delicate stuff (and loud), but the TR-7 is both efficient and gentle on clothing while being quiet. Have had one for a while and love it. No machine is perfect but this feels pretty close.
frompdx
They are also very heavy duty compared to a normal washer and dryer, even a basic one. I've had mine since 2017 and they just work.
adiabatichottub
It's only $1700! And would also last 30+ years, like a 1980s Maytag
adiabatichottub
I love it. I used to work for a company targeting markets in the developing world. It's really easy to take for granted the supply chains that exist all around us. I always like to see the creative solutions people come up with when resources are constrained.
PS: As an example, note the sheet-metal construction. In an industrialized country we would laser-cut all these parts. If you wanted to make this in an area with less infrastructure you might use a template and carbide gas torch to cut out the large shapes, then a hand punch to make the screw holes. More labor intensive, but still doable.
aljgz
Love seeing this.
For many reasons, I expect to see a lot of new products and solutions going against the main trends of locking down the user, planned obsolence, rent seeking from buyers, and limiting their choices.
Imagining a company shipping the home appliances equivalent to Frame.work laptops: open, reparable, hackable, and upgradable. I would happily connect them to my home wifi, program them the way I want, and have one hub that allows me to monitor health, upgrade firmware, control functionality.
markbao
This is very cool. Great that it’s built out of metal for longevity and repairability. Wonder if they could make the radius of the rotation smaller since that seems like the most likely ergonomic improvement I could see from the demo.
teruakohatu
It is easy to understand the impact this will be in people’s lives.
I think within no time it will be modded with motors, maybe salvaged from broken electrical appliances and it will come full circle.
throwaway173738
You’d need electricity for that and a lot of places don’t have it.
AlotOfReading
You'd be surprised at the places that have electricity, like houses in middle of nowhere, central asia. One of the challenges with engineering technology for the global south is that poverty is wildly different for different people. I met a professor working on flatpack windmills to pump water/electricity. The major challenges he kept seeing in the the Andes weren't the sorts of longevity/efficiency/logistics issues we usually solve with standard engineering, but how the products interacted with local politics and society.
xnx
Previously (2021): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28168460
christkv
Wait does it not need a rise as well to get the soap out of the clothes?
petermcneeley
Checks all the boxes but why no TEDx talk?
mystraline
Deleted cause I was wrong.
tomcatfish
The THIRD sentence in the article explains that they ship to the US. You are tone-policing your hallucinated version of the article!
> Enter Navjot Sawhney, who founded the UK-based social enterprise The Washing Machine Project (TWMP) to tackle this, and has now shipped almost 500 of his hand-crank Divya machines to 13 countries, including Mexico, Ghana, Iraq *and the US.*
throwaway173738
Can you give one example of someone you know or have heard of who could benefit from one of these as opposed to a really cheap rental grade 120vac modern washing machine? You’d have to not have electricity to need one of these and rural electrification was a thing over 100 years ago here.
tbrownaw
Maybe some of the prepper crowd?
denkmoon
TFA states units have been shipped to the US.
Brian_K_White
I wouldn't be surprised if the US ones weren't mostly used by people with camp sites. Even the poorest people have elctricity. But affluent people have remote camps.
superultra
But can it really clean clothes if it doesn’t have 802.11ac with AI spot cleaning and a 750mv iOS app??? /s
lostlogin
No, but if it has access to your contacts it can.
NedF
[dead]
Feel like replacing my piece of shit LG with this. It can only soak for a predetermined amount of time and if I try to pause it to soak longer it drains the water in 3 minutes. Plus, scrud!