smeeeeeeeeeeeee

Don't worry, I am actually working on incorporating a language model that will replace the control knob ($49 per month for 3 use tokens per day) as well as blockchain based coffee batch identifiers

This is actually the only place I've posted it haha. Will incorporate feedback from here (especially more candid video content) before proceeding.

I filed for a patent a couple days ago on the burr assembly, and a design patent on the wood arch thing, but definitely not looking to prevent anyone from making their own. Only to prevent some massive company from running off with it or even patenting it since I'm never going to be that high profile.

It's petroleum based but it's not a thermoplastic. It's a really wonderful material though more expensive than you'd think.

It tastes different! Filter is fundamentally extracting an entirely different way

https://youtu.be/yQpHnXKQNq0?si=j0UINumbw_NFAzW6

Thank you!

It is definitely true that larger burrs have more surface area to retain grounds. In general, I think most people consider the tradeoff worth it in terms of flavor, especially because in my experience the coffee that builds up in the burr of any grinder is likely to stay there whereas coffee that sits in nooks and crannies around the chute is likely to get cycled each time.

The knocker is actually hidden within the hopper itself, you twist and release it and it knocks into the burr. The basic idea for the design is that you have 3 rings, and each of them is a touch point, the bottom turns it on, the middle adjusts the size, and the top is the knocker.

Thank you for noticing this, Oculo was a working name when the hopper looked more like an eye but now it doesn't! Clearly I've left some random references to the old name around. Could you point me to where in the shop it says Oculo?

This is an incredibly complicated subject full of dissenting opinions and obviously people have their preferences especially across different brew types. In my opinion, the effect of densification within grinders with longer, or multiple cutting paths is universally positive for flavor. Fine particles accumulate with eachother and with larger particles and everything is rolled and rounded. One of the things to remember is that over-grinding coffee, I assume you mean by putting it over and over through the same burr set, is not the same as putting it once through a longer burr set. With the cylindrical burrs, the coffee is doing the same thing that any other set of burrs do, only over a longer distance period of time, so the coffee has more time to densify.

Below is a great James Hoffman video comparing traditional coffee grinders to roller grinders, though the company keeps a lot of the details a secret, their grinder not only has a very long grind path, but also a dedicated densification stage.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WkYqHWThIpA

I have only done blind taste tests using my friends and family as unwitting participants, and they've universally preferred turbina over a 64mm flat burr grinder with titanium nitride burrs and a high-ish end conical hand grinder. But obviously, this may be a matter of preference!

Thank you! And you should still design an espresso machine!

Argh, yeah squarespace seperates the store from the overall site. Definitely need to re-organize and add some stuff, like an about us page. For now, you can uhhh watch me fighting robots on TV

https://youtu.be/vaBejT_TpWs?si=ZTs0fpLuHzNX31uS

Some day! The 9Barista is so cool, I think that was the first video of his that I watched actually

The ones out there now are wonderful, but quite huge and expensive because they rely on AC motors which sadly aren't very power dense and don't scale down well

Thank you!

I used fusion to design and printed ergonomic/partial prototypes on Prusa 3d printers. Then, I fortunately had a ton of manufacturing contacts because I have worked as somewhat of a production engineer before. Some parts were definitely difficult, especially the outer burr of the grinder (there were a couple viable ways to make it, but it is sometimes difficult to find a shop that is price competitive in say wire EDM machining and 5 axis CNC, or CNC and casting, so you have to get shops to coordinate with eachother) or the wood arch (because high volume wood shops are not nearly as technologically sophisticated as metalworking shops)

PCBway is a good option now, especially for 3D printed metal parts. They have CNC as well but they tend to struggle with anything that has complicated geometry or features. But 3D printing doesn't require approval, and for one offs is often cheaper.

I think I did make a mistake in not having the product in more real life environments. My kitchen is not very pretty so I set up a little photo area to capture all the images and video. Now I will find some kitchens to borrow.

Thank you so much, this really means a lot.

They are all real! But I definitely need to have more photos in actual environments.

There are actually no renderings on the website except for that one cross-section of the grinder, the internals are rendered there.

But absolutely, going to add more "banana for scale" photos asap

Hahahaha, that is fair, but I like to think it is the important half =]

We figured out how to heat water thousands of years ago. Flow control is considerably newer

Thank you so much! I appreciate the advice about the potentially over stylized product pages. If you go to the store here, you can see many full profile views of the products:

https://velofuso.com/store

You raise a ton of good points.

- It's going to ship with a full spare parts catalogue available

- Full prusa-esque upgrade paths will be made available for existing customers

- Every single part on either product can be changed off with the removal of 1-5 screws.

- The switches, cords, buttons, and (gear)motors are all standard sizes.

- and I absolutely commit to open sourcing everything if a day came where the project could not continue (I have done this for previous projects, it isn't an empty promise)

You make a good point about the burrs being a non-standard size. The thing to remember is every size of burr was once a non standard size. One of the most important parts of being a good engineer is only making something new when you can truly add value, and I think the burrs are valuable enough to have them be probably the only non-standard wear item in either machine.

Hey there!

Yep, you bring the hot water, the machine does everything else! There is a pressure seal directly in the group head that holds the water in at the end of a shot. You can preheat just by pumping water into a cup for a couple seconds, which is around the same as a purge cycle on a traditional espresso machine. The fluid path is kept as small and as insulated as possible to avoid thermal losses or unnecessary water being held in the machine.

I added a pre-release version of the manual to the warranty page! Please excuse any minor errors.

https://velofuso.com/warranty

I definitely agree that there needs to be a simple clean 30 second video of the full workflow with every part visible - I will work on that ASAP.

Thank you, a couple of people have suggested optional cable clips along the stand. Will work on this.

Serviceability is definitely a critical design consideration. Going to have a full spare parts catalogue available on ship day. Virtually everything can be changed on both machines by removing between 1-5 screws, and nothing is particularly finnicky or requires special tools.

Oooh I understand now! Thanks.

Thank you so much!

It was this exact question that lead me down the rabbit hole to making espresso machines. The main reason everyone uses them is because they're $25, small, and can leverage the oscillation of mains voltage for their operation. The next best thing is probably $300 and quite large and heavy - and those professional gear pumps fundamentally don't scale down well. Ours operates under the same principle though with a completely different sort of motor that hasn't been common until pretty recently.

I love all these machines that we're comparing to but they're fundamentally different things - they don't have a pump to fit into their BOM. So maybe:

In the category of "machines that don't froth milk", it might be the most expensive by $50.

In the category of "machines that have pressure control", it might be the cheapest by $700

In the category of "machines that have a rotary pump", it might be the cheapest by $2000.

It's sort of the curse of making something that doesn't clearly fit into a specific category.

51mm portafilters are better and some day the world will come to understand

https://youtu.be/jTAkb-dCFro?si=QQ6K9l99xqOCQl5S

It's the quietest electric grinder I've used but I didn't want to diss any competitors in particular! It has a nice low rumble for probably 45 seconds grinding a single dose. I think the noise level is helped by the fact that the motor is completely enclosed by the heavy stainless steel burr, which basically eliminates its noise, and the fact that it spins slower than other grinders because it has a larger grinding area.

It is easy to say the espresso machine is the quietest because basically everything else uses the same pump, which is way louder and more annoying than ours, but grinders are much more variable not just in terms of noise level but also how annoying the noise is.

They use Mazzer burrs, a classic!

Niche made the single dose grinder mainstream though and deserve a ton of credit for that

Thank you, fixed it!

>I think there should be a (optional) storage container integrated where the ground coffee goes.

There is a little cup that fits right below the grinder, or do you mean something else?

>I would expect a $749 grinder work with any coffee beans.

I totally get this, and I definitely want to make a burr set that works with everything. The reason these don't is essentially because these burrs are designed for something called densification - it's where particles are gradually rounded and amalgamated as they are mixed and tumbled. The cutting path for most grinders on the market today is too short for to see much of this, so it definitely sets this grinder apart in terms of flavor profile and even how the grounds look. The downside is that sticky and oily particles resist that process and expand and start to clog up the bottom of the burr when grinding finely. When grinding for filter, it's fine, but with espresso can require some routine cleanings.

This is very cool! Also check out Gaggiuino!

https://gaggiuino.github.io/#/

Hopefully going to work with their community to find a way to make it communicate with our pump upgrade.

Yes totally, I actually made filter coffee with it this morning. Sorry I will add this!

Thank you so much for the order!

I think the trouble with using fluid-o-tech style pumps (I actually started out by buying one) is that they're really optimized for machines where the space, cost, and weight of the pump aren't a significant concern, so they can get away with using a giant slow AC motor with big gears. That sort of motor unfortunately doesn't scale down too well, so instead we use a small DC brushless motor and spin it very fast, and then even with the power supply it still ends up being a smaller and cheaper setup.

It's not inferior, it's just a different kind of machine!

The main advantages are in the workflow - heating, brewing, cleaning, etc are all done by pressing a button, and the pressure itself is going to stay at exactly what you set it to.

It's also a fair bit smaller than the robot.