BUILDING THE DE1 : WHAT WE'RE WORKING ON

Back in Hong Kong at our factory, we're building two "final release" machines (110V and 220V) in order to catch any last remaining mechanical issues before building the 300 "early access" machines. Having Interns doing the work has actually been helpful, as they build things "naively" and have caught some remaining problems we've been blind to.

The list of problems is not so long, but we do need to solve them.

---

PROBLEM #1: the temperature probe in the group head requires too much skill to mount perfectly, resulting in imprecise temperature readings. This was not caught previously because our machines were built by Jeffrey, and "he's too good". Our interns aren't as good as him.

SOLUTION: stop using a temperature bead and our own design mounting, and switch to using the same ready-made temperature probe we use everywhere else in the DE1.



We haven't yet nailed this, as putting the probe there does alter water flow characteristic, and even water flow on the coffee puck is an important goal for us. We may have as much as two more weeks design work on this before we can have a sample made for real testing.

---

PROBLEM #2 : the water flow meter connectors are about 2mm thicker than we expected. This makes it quite hard to get the tubing on. Again, Jeffrey managed but the interns had trouble. This was not caught before because the supplier had not provided us with technical drawings.

SOLUTION: switch to a new flow meter, from our favorite supplier (ODE, an Italian company), who also make our pumps and valves. Their parts are found everywhere in professional Italian espresso machines.





We've also gone through several iterations of our mixing chamber (the brown-colored part in the drawing above), because the one we had designed turned out to be very expensive ($85 each) to manufacture. The size is now much reduced, so we can injection mould the part, thus greatly lowering the per-piece price. We are awaiting a sample of our new design so we can test it before paying for the mould to be made.

---

PROBLEM #3: sharp bends required of the tubing, which could cause failure:

SOLUTION: enlarge the hole and the size of the rubber gromet as well.



---

That's what we're currently working on, so we can make our first batch of machines.

If you do these things there will be no Voodoo Daddy or Naked Portafilter mods to post about. What will we do other than pull shots?

Hopefully, make lots of great coffee!

Continuing reports below on our progress. Today there's a batch of more teeny-tiny things that need to be corrected, to make assembly and repair a bit easier.







We've had problems getting the less expensive flow meter to work acceptably in the DE1, so I made the executive decision to put the same $40 swiss-made precision flow meter in both the DE1 and DE1+, at least for these 300 machines we're making. This reduces by half the number of hardware platforms (DE1 and DE1PRO, at 110V and 220V) so that we now have 4 different models, instead of 8. This also means that this batch of DE1s will actually be hardware identical to the DE1+, and that an extra-cost firmware upgrade would be possible to migrate a DE1 to the DE1+. This makes the DE1 more expensive for us to make, but simplifies things for now. We'll need to decide, in the future, whether to simplify the DE1 hardware to make it less expensive to manufacture, or increase its price, or something else.

So, to summarize, this means that for the time being, we're only building DE1+ (and DE1PRO+) machines, and that people who order a DE1 will be actually getting a hardware DE1+ platform, with DE1 firmware in it.

Bunkmil wrote:That's good news for your customers! Is there a way to know if the DE1 I ordered will be one of this first 300 units batch?

Everyone who has ordered so far will be part of the batch we're building now. Once those 300 have shipped, we'll wait 60 days or so, to see how the reviews are, and ask people to place their order in for v1.1 of the DE1, which will take about 4 months to build. Because we're still quite small, it's much more economical for us to build several thousand machines in one pass, but we won't know whether to build 1,000 or 10,000 machines until the reviews are in.

As someone who is on the fence regarding the DE1 vs DE1+, I love the idea of a more expensive DE1 that is firmware upgrade-able when I'm ready for the more advanced profiling options. What would the DE1 price point need to be to make the more robust parts feasible?

I fully agree with this too. While you may sell less of the DE1+ models, you will more than make that up on the DE1 models as well as the frequent upgrades.

decent_espresso wrote:Everyone who has ordered so far...

Just to clarify, including those who have placed a 50% deposit?

MB wrote:Just to clarify, including those who have placed a 50% deposit?

All 300 of the machines being now built are DE1+ hardware, the only difference is the firmware.

If you've placed an order (even a 50% deposit) we're currently working on building your machine, and it'll be a DE1+ hardware machine.

I can't tell you right now what a DE1+ firmware upgrade will cost, and I don't know when we'll offer that feature. There's a bunch of work to make that possible, and building the machines people have ordered is our first priority.

rhtrevino wrote:As someone who is on the fence regarding the DE1 vs DE1+, I love the idea of a more expensive DE1 that is firmware upgrade-able when I'm ready for the more advanced profiling options.

rhtrevino wrote:What would the DE1 price point need to be to make the more robust parts feasible?

We don't know yet, and we won't know the real cost for building our espresso machines until we build 3000 or more machines at one time.

At the moment our suppliers are giving us terrible prices, because nobody wants to make 300 custom parts for us: they want to make ten times that quantity.

How much less our machine will cost to make is not something we'll know until we actually negotiate with each vendor for a price for several thousand quantity of some part.

Even though we have 65 machines left, we'll probably stop taking orders soon, because we'll want to keep about 30 machines for ourselves.

Once the 300 machines have been made, sent out, and reviewed, we'll have a "winter order deadline", something like December 1st, where everyone who wants a decent espresso machine needs to get their order in by that date. We'll then build that many machines (whatever quantity we have ordered for that deadline), it'll take about 4 months (parts take up to 90 days to arrive) and then we'll repeat the process for the next manufacturing batch.

decent_espresso wrote: Even though we have 65 machines left, we'll probably stop taking orders soon, because we'll want to keep about 30 machines for ourselves.

Just to clarify, this means that an order placed today would still be part of the initial 300?