by luca on Sat Feb 02, 2008 9:13 am
Hey guys,
I turned up to work today to find that there was a Compak K10 WBC on the bench. This was kind of cool, as I love to play around with different grinders. One of my co-workers bought one to play around with it. Take this for what it's worth - one shift worth of experience.
Good points:
*Fast
*Grind quality seems pretty good
*Spike in the middle of the doser helps to prevent ground coffee buildup on centre of dosing mechanism (in comparison with mazzer)
*Apparently the doser lever can be switched to be left or right handed
Good and bad:
*The doser doesn't fling much coffee over the left-hand edge of the basket, but grounds pile up on the left-hand side of the basket.
*Good visibility into the doser, but the thing looks half-built with the doser lid off (the WBC prototype has a new lid setup).
Bad:
*Looks and feels a bit insubstantial; in particular, the transparent plastic looks like it would be prone to cracking. For example, some folk around here like to thwack their portafilter on top of the dosing chamber - it looks to me like that would shatter the Compak dosing chamber.
*Exit chute from burrs holds a fair bit of coffee. I had to make sure that I purged it before making each shot if it wasn't full of coffee that had been ground right before making the shot - if I didn't, my shots flowed faster.
*Portafilter fork is terrible; it is plastic, so you can't rap your PF against it to settle the coffee as you dose and it collects grounds in such a way that it smears them all over the bottom of your portafilter. (Again, the WBC prototype has a metal fork - hopefully this will be made available to retrofit).
*Grinds tray sits in the foot of the grinder, which extends out in front. Some coffee spills over the sides, although it is much wider than the tray in the domestic models. It just strikes me that grinders are a lot easier to keep clean if they have a separate tray - this is especially the case for me, as I have my knockbox cut into the table, so I can put my grinder directly over it.
*Spring in doser lever felt weaker than the mazzer spring.
*Grind size indicator is on doser lid. This is a tiny issue, but I thought I'd mention it seeing as a few others did the same thing that I did; namely to remove the doser lid to get a better look into the doser, then to wonder whether the collar needed to be turned the same way as a mazzer and have to fish out the doser lid to check.
Overall, I think that it delivers a lot for your money, but the exit chute issue is probably not trivial if you are using it at home. Doser-wise, the Compak is supposed to sweep cleaner, but the Roburs that I have used seemed to be on par with this K10. The K10 has a straighter drop than the Robur. I also remember the Robur doser being higher, which I find to make it easier/more pleasant to use.
Remember that to some extent, you can make a lot of useful modifications to many grinders. Pretty much anything will sweep cleaner if you're prepared to fit some electrical tape to the sweepers. Mazzers can have a deflector plate mounted on the screws for the built-in tamper so that they drop straight down (this is particularly good on the Kony/Robur/Royal because there is a bit more room between the PF fork and the doser). You can perform a gagillion modifications to make a stepped grinder stepless (eg. BNZ, Anfim). I can't really think of a feasible mod for fixing the K10 exit chute, but maybe some clever soul has already done it.
Hope that helps,
Luca
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