With its transparent case and microwave-size dimensions, it’s easy to mix up the Heatworks Tetra for one of the numerous tabletop consumer 3D printers sporting a similar design these days. But Tetra’s purpose isn’t additive like a printer, it’s subtractive: a compact kitchen appliance designed to wash dishes with a minimal amount of water and time.
Sculpted and engineered in partnership with Frog Design, the Tetra’s compact dimensions are made possible by Heatwork’s previous efforts producing the Model 3 tankless water heater. Using the same tankless technology that permits abandoning traditional heating elements for graphite electrodes (Ohmic Array technology), the Tetra is able to heat water with greater precision and efficiency using only half a gallon of water and 10 minutes for a full cycle cleaning.
“Our research indicates that although the average household is comprised of 2.58 people, the modern dishwasher holds place settings for 13 or more. This makes people believe that they either need to handwash their few dirty dishes — which wastes 10 times more water than using a dishwasher — or wait for a fill load to run a cycle. With Tetra, we hope to change people’s mindset.” -Jerry Callahan, CEO and founder of Heatworks
The Tetra’s capacity holds two full place settings or 10 plates or 12 pint glasses – all visible through its 3/4 clear top sitting on top of the stainless steel base. The more eyebrow raising claims are related to its extended capabilities: “sanitizing baby products, washing plastic storage containers without melting, cooking seafood, or cleaning fruit”. In other words, the Tetra might become the first cooking appliances also capable of washing up after dinner.
Tetra will cost under $300 and will be available for purchase in late 2018.

4 Comments
Devon Frohne on 01.30.2018 at 00:16 AM
Very beautiful ID, but its rather useless, unless you live by yourself, and use 1 plate for a meal, which is pretty much never.
Creativename on 01.31.2018 at 17:09 PM
Sure, if you are a couple it can handle your minimal place settings, but what about the rest of the dishes used to prep or serve your meals? Thinking of my daily sink-load, I’d be running this no less than 5 times a day.
Susie k on 02.10.2018 at 14:32 PM
The cycle runs for 10 minutes. So in theory you can run 5 cycles in under an hour which is less time then a standard dishwasher cycle. It would need an adjustment in behavior regarding cleaning.
I like that economics with water and space which is important to me.
Chris on 12.24.2018 at 15:27 PM
As a single guy living in an old mansion broken up into apartments WITHOUT dishwashers, this…looks…PERFECT. Dish washing is my number one time-sinking chore, and this covers the normal dish usage I have. Of course cookware would have to be washed separately, but that’s a small price to pay for the rest to be automated. I’m buying this now, if it’s available.
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