Paul_Pratt wrote:Not to mention a refrigerator, weight based grinder etc...to be honest anytime I see "15 bar pump" used in marketing fluff I just know they are clueless. I might back this just to stay in the loop, keep track of my tax dollars hard at work

They say the milk reservoir is detachable and connects to a cooling system in the unit that maintains a temperature below 4 °C. Apparently the milk frother is so good it makes microfoam suitable for latte art. The company is listed on the HK Science & Technology Parks site here, but it sounds like they're actually a smartphone app developer.

They're now up to about 1400 pre-order units and almost $500,000. Their goal retail price for this machine is $700, so they now have to manufacture several times as many units as they originally planned at probably no profit. It's now a Kickstarter staff pick with more than two weeks left in the campaign, so that number will probably go up significantly higher. Maybe we are all pessimists, but after watching the ongoing failures of so many similar hyped up coffee projects it is a bit frustrating how easy it is to make huge promises and never deliver.

Mark Prince is advising people to pull their support:

The only thing I see brewing here is a ****storm and at this point I'm sorely tempted to back $1 to see that happening.

This is true. I think it's easy to see the difference between Arist and coffee tech that should be supported though.

Does Arist sound too good to be true? Yes. If it is true, can it actually live up to your expectations? Probably not. So why the insane amount of backing?

Invergo was a neat idea, it's too bad he had no intention of delivering product without WAY MORE MONEY!

They have now posted a video showing a working prototype. OK so none of us here are expecting to see great coffee from this, so no problems there. There is of course a huge market for these machines and it is probably not ours. But most of us have used, sold or serviced these things over the years. And I will go back to Alan's point from before, to paraphrase "where are the guts?". By looking at the video the top half is taken up entirely by the milk fridge at the front and the entire back top half are the bean hoppers. The middle section is the water tank.

So where is the grinder and the scales? And where are the the boiler/thermoblocks and the ultra complicated brewing unit. And also usually when the machine is doing it's brewing you usually hear all sorts of squeaks and groans as it compresses "tempers" as they call it, and usually ejection of pucks is normally accompanied by a cacophony of motors and gears.

And the machine looks like it has only 1 internal pipe that carries the coffee, milk water or whatever. See how much residue is carried over from the old shot to the cleaning cycle he does.

The spent puck looks nice and compact and 58mm basket shaped. And very dry and not in the least bit steaming hot. My memories of fully auto machines are ones of sloppy shots being ejected that make a dreadful mess of the spent coffee bin.

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/23 ... time/posts

Have a look if you have a spare few minutes. Very interesting, especially the comments section with the conspiracy theories. Awesome entertainment.

Paul_Pratt wrote:So where is the grinder and the scales? And where are the the boiler/thermoblocks and the ultra complicated brewing unit. And also usually when the machine is doing it's brewing you usually hear all sorts of squeaks and groans as it compresses "tempers" as they call it, and usually ejection of pucks is normally accompanied by a cacophony of motors and gears.

And the machine looks like it has only 1 internal pipe that carries the coffee, milk water or whatever. See how much residue is carried over from the old shot to the cleaning cycle he does.

The spent puck looks nice and compact and 58mm basket shaped. And very dry and not in the least bit steaming hot. My memories of fully auto machines are ones of sloppy shots being ejected that make a dreadful mess of the spent coffee bin.

This was my exact thought from the first time I watched the video, "where's the beef?" There is not enough room for all the proposed machinery.

I have a WMF 1000S super-auto in my office, it is about 2 foot cubed. A true grind on demand cappuccino maker, makes real 14 gram 49mm pucks, and excellent espresso shots, if you tune it regularly. The auto foamed milk is of course too bubbly, but for an office super-auto that anyone can use it is passable. Its single flow head for milk and coffee with between drinks flush and rinse cycles is an engineering marvel. I love to watch it work. So, super-auto machines already exist, good ones, is their angle just that they know how to do it more cheaply? What do they know that the Swiss and German manufacturing companies never learned?

That WMF cost me around $3500.00 USD (everything is more expensive here), WMF has on site service and support, and a very long history in the business. If anyone has used WMF', Jura's, other high end super autos, you know that these things break. They need lots of cleaning, rinsing, descaling, maintenance.

I just don't see how they can make one "on the cheap".

The entertainment continues, with just a few days left they now have a staggering US$750K. They might be clueless and have a nice empty box, sorry, fully working prototype, but they have struck a chord with people's desire to throw money at something if it is cheap and too good to be true.

The excitement peaked a few days ago when one member Jerry called them out on their "fully-working prototype", and asked along with others for them to produce proof that it was indeed a working unit. Just a simple video of it working, i.e. grinding, bean moving etc... After days of back and forth, Artist shocked us with the news that it was not going to happen. We never saw that coming. The reason for the secrecy is for patent protection, oh yes. They need a new patent lawyer.

So backers are now left to shell out money on a mystery box that spurts out brown liquid. We are led to believe that in the past few months some software programmers with zero coffee experience have made from scratch a brand new, so new that it requires patents, fully-automatic coffee machine. Other gems from the past few days:

• -Never mind your wimpy 15 bar pump, this is so badass it pumps out 19bars!
  -It uses a rotary pump (even though in the few videos released you can hear a vibe pump)
  -The portafilter is stainless steel - yes it really says that.
  -The inside is "made from metal"

You can't make this stuff up.

I considered pledging a dollar for the entertainment value of the insider updates, but instead I'll check this thread.

(The mobile site is great)