kwantfm wrote:This printer looks complicated... how many motors driving this thing? I am intrigued!

3 motors. Big one (Which has since grown considerably!) drives the burrs, lower one controls grind adjustment, the top one feeds the beans.

bwilliams wrote:So what is the motivation for showing it off to everybody if there is no possibility of making it available in any fashion, either complete built for sale, specs for sale, or as a start for a crowd source?

Barron

To give confidence to others who might consider designing and building a single dose grinder and have nothing better to do with their time

I would bet it works better than the Versalab, although it does not appear to fit under an upper cabinet.

dsc wrote:I suggest first spending 0.5 - 1 year on designing a grinder from scratch (even using similar ideas to already existing machines), sorting out all the parts and the electronic / electric side of it and then happily passing it on to others to build and possibly make profit out of it.

I may do so, after finishing my grain mill project. I recently published all of design specs and test results for my homebrew RIMS system (mash temperature control system with pump, 115VAC heating element, PID, necessary switches, hoses, wiring, circuit breakers, lamps/buzzers, plus programming settings for the PID). One project at a time Seriously, look at the DIY section of homebrewtalk.com for a good example of the kind of idea sharing and creativity that is happening. I really think innovation happens much faster with this kind of community, especially in niche markets. One could argue that the current renaissance of craft beer in the commercial market is due in large part to the energy/passion of the non-professional homebrew community where many craft brewers got their start.

I'm not saying that the designer of Monolith or anyone has an obligation to share their designs, especially if they have some future intent to commercialize. I am wondering what kind of innovation could we see in the grinder market if a bunch of passionate amateurs started tinkering.

dsc wrote: Btw, 3D printed parts in a grinder, seriously?

We'll, it's being done for titanium bicycle parts, so why not?

I'm not saying that the designer of Monolith or anyone has an obligation to share their designs, especially if they have some future intent to commercialize. I am wondering what kind of innovation could we see in the grinder market if a bunch of passionate amateurs started tinkering.

And I'm not saying it's a mad idea to think someone might be interested in sharing their designs, what I'm simply stating is the possible reason why the originator might be not interesting in doing anything more with their creation.

3D printing is fine for parts, but you need quite high precision in some key areas of the grinder. A 3D printed bicycle part might be perfectly fine even for high loads, but when it comes to dimension precision I'm not so sure. Can you get parts which offer tolerances down to 0.01mm? prototyping is another matter and 3D excels at that I have to agree.

Regards,
dsc.

bwilliams wrote:So what is the motivation for showing it off to everybody if there is no possibility of making it available in any fashion, either complete built for sale, specs for sale, or as a start for a crowd source?

Barron

Most people on here love reading about machines and grinders that they will never own. The intellectual curiosity about all things coffee is one of the unifying themes of this website.

Bob,

Would you mind taking a photo or two of the funnel on the bottom, and maybe describe why this design was chosen (because straight-through designs require wdt?)?

As you may know, I have some interest in this sort of thing. DIY robur belt-driven grinder. I'm almost ready to make some changes to my machine, and this may be one of them. When I had a vario, one of the best parts was the grinds coming out in a narrow stream, and I could shoot them to different parts of the basket.

John: Any photos of your grinder project?

Stephen

CoffeeMac wrote:I'm not saying that the designer of Monolith or anyone has an obligation to share their designs, especially if they have some future intent to commercialize. I am wondering what kind of innovation could we see in the grinder market if a bunch of passionate amateurs started tinkering.

This is what I'm talking about:

http://hg-one.com/hg-one-e-open-source/

Very cool! No 3D printing so far, though

FotonDrv wrote:John: Any photos of your grinder project?

Stephen

Here is a vid.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m9C1fVU8z-I

Thank you for the video! You have made good progress and it is obvious that it dumps grounds like an HG-1 and not like a VL, i.e. Cone Vs Volcano.