I found the latest newsletter from Aillio very interesting, as they have used X-rays to examine why the bean temperature probes were not reporting as consistently across different roasters as they would like. To me this is really a sign of the dedication that the Aillio guys have to improve quality wherever they can. They are having new probes made with a higher standard to make them perform more consistently, and all owners will be able to swap out to one of the new higher quality probes once they arrive, at no charge.

I just finished a session of 5 roasts with my Bullet R1 and appreciate the small details in the design more each time I use it. I did my first "Playback" roast tonight that matches the exact power, fan, and drum speed inputs from a previous roast profile template. It works great and lets you fine tune a beans profile without manually copying the previous inputs.

I have also ordered the now available tryer, which comes with a new face-plate panel that has a tryer hole installed. It will be great to get back to pulling the tryer as I roast.

Here is the newsletter from Aillio:

Greetings Everyone!

In this newsletter, we're giving you a peek behind the curtains here at Aillio. We want to show you how our vision for the Bullet R1 influences every decision we make.

The Future of Roasting (As We See It!)

We have designed the Bullet to be your best friend while roasting. Like all great friends, it must be sensitive to your needs, and for great roasts you primarily need two things: control and feedback. To control your roasts on the Bullet, you can make instantaneous adjustments to its power, drum speed, and fan speed settings. As for feedback, we have outfitted the Bullet with multiple sensors to generate data that our RoastTime software captures and makes sense of in real time. Oh, and of course, we mustn't forget the tryers!

But in addition to feedback and control, we see a third pillar for the successful home roaster to lean against, and that is community. We really hope that after roasting on our machine you'll want to share your experiences with others, so that we can all learn and grow together.

This is why it is crucial that our internal sensors provide data that is consistent and meaningful - not just for individual roasters but for the entire community.

Things That Make You Go Hmm...?

So, when the bean temperature readings that our users were sharing with each other on the unofficial forums were less consistent with each other than we thought they should be, we took notice. We should first mention that, for a variety of reasons, bean temperature readings can be particularly difficult to pin down. Most experienced roasters understand this, and it certainly wasn't preventing our users from roasting great coffee. But we nonetheless felt a responsibility to do everything we could to understand what we were seeing.

Eager to play detective, we took our bean temperature probes to a laboratory to have them X-rayed. We then saw with our own eyes that the temperature sensors inside the probes were not 100% consistent in their placement. These little variations may affect the speed at which they heat up, and could certainly account for the differences we were seeing in the readings our users were sharing with each other.

Our Response? Let's Improve!

X-Rays are now integral to our quality control process, and we've already placed an order for new probes that will meet our exacting standards. We've notified all of our customers about our discovery and are going to make sure that everyone who wants a more accurate probe can get one, at no additional charge. It really means that much to us!

New Orders to Ship in December

We are still taking new orders! While supplies last, you can still order your own Bullet R1 from the next batch at this link: Order the Aillio Bullet R1! New orders are now expected to ship in December, after we receive the new and improved bean probes. We would like to be able to ship them out sooner, but we really can't pass up an opportunity to make our Bullet a little bit better for everyone. Merely being "good enough" just isn't our style.

We hope to be great!

Till next time: Keep drinking great coffee, everyone!

- Aillio

Thermocouples are tricky.

Omega have a section dedicated to latency and offset related to different sheathing on Thermocouples. Insulated are the worst, earthed are better and fully exposed the best. Of course engineering is compromise, so to offset the great advantages of exposing the thermocouple junction - one has a greater propensity to pickup noise with exposed and grounded junctions.

Thinner is of course also better. But may not be as resilient.

That said there are designs out there that do a good and repeatable job. The Thermapen is a great example of a carefully crafted thermocouple.

Nice that they are on an improvement path.