How about an LED light under the ground chute? My Mini gets a bit dark under the doser in the early AM, and it will add a bit of aesthetic flash with the chrome and/or stainless.

funnel creates more clumping than chute in my experience.

Here's an interesting Mazzer Mini mod. Found it on a German forum, but in short this chap had a manual Mini and modded it with:

- a Mini E chute
- the Mini E PF fork
- the backplate from a Mini E

http://www.kaffee-board.de/cgi-bin/ikonboard/ikonboard.cgi?act=ST;f=32;t=5305

The parts were apparently ordered as spares. Apparently this is possible... and when you add a plug-in timer, you have yourself a discount price Mini E...

Br,
Teme

guess i need to call up mazzer. I asked EPNW about getting a spare Mini-E chute, but it's a no-go now... they don't have 'em yet.

Chute.

Here is some pics of my mods. It is made out of sheet metal, from wood stove piping, and riveted together. I mocked it up as a prototype in 30 minutes but it worked so well that I have not made a more permanent and better looking replacement yet. I used a small straight discharge chute as it is easier to clean out the old grounds which I periodicaly clean using a large shop vac. The bottom of the chute has a small flap that sits inside the grinder. When I hit the top of the chute with the back of my coffee brush it causes the flap to vibrate up and down and loosen the grounds as I'm grinding and ease them out of the chute into a container. Not a perfect solution. But I will probably grind out the discharge opening on the grinder to make it larger and install a short round pipe as a discharge chute later on and fabricate a new cover.

and

Okay, things are going slower than I hoped (but what's new...)

Here's the business end of the latest prototype. *Should* actually be running in a week or two...

The coupe de grace is yet to be shown... These are just the teasers...

Oh, and pardon the condition of the SJ. It's an empty shell that's been partially sandblasted...

here's da pics:




I know it's early but, comments?

ciao

lino

Hey Lino,

I see where you're going with this and I like it. Does the bottom of the chute have to extend that far up into the grinds opening, or am I just looking at that wrong?

Lino,
I have been following your progress with great intrest, having just finished the martini shaker version mod. Your latest mod looks very clean. I will be interested to hear how it performs. I did have problems with stray grounds at the bottom of my chute, so I used the top of my martini shaker and made a funnel out of it for my portafilter. Makes for a very clean process now (my wife is very happy about this). Look forward to hearing about your progress.

jim

A little update...

Been running with this version since this morning.
Can't say I'm crazy about it...

Pros:
Looks nice, simple
grounds stay well contained (for a doeserless)
grinds like a Mazzer (who woulda thought?)

Cons:
Clumping.


That's a pretty big con. The problem is that it starts in the tunnel from the burrs to the outside of the case. Very little accumulates in the chute.

As one would expect, the finer the grind, the worse the clumping. A little coarser than a "typical" espresso grind is enough for the "air pump" design of the burr carrier to blow the grinds straight out. With espresso, (in my limited ~10 shot experience) it's clump city.
But it gets a little worse, I've also noticed (since I don't have a bean hopper right now) when the beans run out, there is a little extra airflow available or something and the grinder can "blow" out the contents of the tunnel. This invariably seems to happen just as the PF is about full and you only need a little more... Bam! (well, it's not that exciting) You get the volume of the tunnel blown onto your full PF.

All these are fairly minor issues, and I've not had the pleasure of spending any time using a doser in a single-use environment. Perhaps that is no worse (or better?) than the issues with a doser?

Some others used the grinder this morning too, perhaps they could add their comments