For those of you watching the LIDO progress.....this is what seems to be becoming a weekly update....

We are about 1/3 done with our grind distribution study, and you can imagine that we have a lot of grinding to do. We started out (Saturday, our semi official day off) to make a correlation between burr adjustment setting and predominate particle size, to see if we could calibrate the grinder in a slightly more geeky way. What ensued, besides a LOT of grinding (Red Bird Espresso 6 day post roast) is what is, to us, a very interesting set of numbers. We started at the coarse end of the range after testing our sieve system using a Ditting batch grinder with new tooled blades as a benchmark. Once we got the methodology worked out to be consistent using the Ditting and vibrating the stack of sieves by holding them on the edge of our mass finishing tub vibrator (30 seconds rattles both the teeth loose and the particles through)...10 gram samples all with the separate sieves weighted, 3 repetitions each for burr settings on the LIDO (2.5 turns of the adjuster from 0, 2.25, 2.0, 1.875, 1.75, 1.5....that is as low as we went for our first session....frankly, as a former lab tech this type of work does bring back some memories, not necessarily good ones...a bit on the tedious side as these things are wont to be). At least we had some good smelling coffee to work with! I had dialed in the LIDO for press at 2 turns on the adjuster from 0 and from the data found that I could go from 1.75 to 2.25 and then tweak the steep time at will...for an espresso person this is all quite enlightening.

Anyway, what we are seeing so far is what we expected to see from a conical burr, or at least the small size conical. Since we are starting on the coarse end of the range we are getting a nice big hump of particle size in the 1mm size range with fairly constant super fines (about 5% of total on the Ditting and about the same on the LIDO) and as the burr setting is tightened by small increments there is not a lot of change until we enter what would be thought of as the drip range.....medium coarse or the coarser end of the fine range....this is where we stopped yesterday but what seems to be happening is that as we tighten the burr the bimodal nature of the grind is starting to show itself. I am sorry that we burned out on the grinding because from the graphs we got it is all starting to get interesting as we go finer and we look forward to getting the time to grind out all the data points to try to better understand just what is happening with the burr and the particle size across the setting spectrum.
After an hour or so or hand grinding I had a brain phart and put a nut on the axle, rigged up a simple interloc and ran the LIDO on a cordless power drill at slow speed. Dual fuel!!! How sweet it is .
More to come...still waiting for the neoprene travel bags. 165 American.

Very nice.

Do you expect any change in performance with a light roast (aside from the performance of the operator struggling with those hard little beans)?

Hey Allon...up late or early? Since these small conical burrs are "nibblers" (vs the big conicals as "smashers") I think that the performance is going to be generally the same for the harder beans with the small conical. We are generally thinking that with each crushed bean there is going to be some unpredictable number of super fine particles produced and the harder the bean the more of these little plagues may be made. It may be that a nibbling burr will make fewer super fines vs a smasher but we at present cannot say one way or another.

I think that the inherently slow or nibbling nature of these smaller conicals will make grinding the hard beans a bit easier.

Thanks for the update. What's the exercise factor like when using these on, say, your press setting? Oh, and was "165 American" a reference to price?

Are there two bearings both above the burset, or just one that "self aligns"? Also, are the burrs virtuoso sized?

Side note: why doesn't the pharos have the lower bearing juuuuuust above the top burrs, just like the top plate with holes to let beans it? I can't imagine it would be less solid.
Any plans to make a pharos 2.0 on the 2-above-bearing lido design (a straight cylinder kept rigid by a big clear chamber?)

jbviau wrote:Thanks for the update. What's the exercise factor like when using these on, say, your press setting? Oh, and was "165 American" a reference to price?

165 american neoprene bags or a reference to the price? If it is a reference to the price can I order

I am assuming grind quality with the rest of your tests will show top notch! What I am wondering with the smaller burr set compared to the PHAROS is how much harder grinding it is? Also how much longer? The only comparison I can draw from is my deceased Hario mini mill hand grinder, so if you have any thoughts on how hard grinding will be with LIDO vs PHAROS vs another hand grinder like the mini mill I would be thankful to learn more.

Any thoughts to share after your marathon session of testing before you went to the motorized version by rigging the cordless power drill later?

The more we fiddle with these different burrs the more predictable they become. The smaller (38mm) conical in the LIDO is a nibbling burr as I mentioned, so therefore it is both easier to turn by hand and slower (more turns per gram beans). Also, counter intuitive to most people the grind rate is faster when grinding finer but with the small conical the hand power to turn does not change much. I have yet to actually count turns on the LIDO since our daily use of it is for press, which by definition is slow coffee so I have not been in any great hurry to grind while the water boils....in practice one gets this artisan feeling going and the mind becomes sort of craftsman focused so the counting thing becomes secondary.
As far as the design of the Pharos and LIDO, in each case we took a burr set and built the frame and bearings etc around the burr, not the other way around, trying to come up with the simplest way to mount the burr, adjust the burr, and turn the burr, etc. using an existing burr set rather than a custom made burr. The grind quality comes from the burr and the challenge is to keep it all aligned and stable but we are bound by the existing design of the burr. The small conical in the LIDO has a round 7mm hole through the inner burr which enables us to directly bolt it to the end of an axle like a traditional hand grinder and the rest of the design follows the burr...same with the Pharos but it has a 13mm keyed hole in the inner burr making a shaft end mount much more complicated (it would take an axle almost 3/4" in diameter and huge bearings and with each step making the Pharos into a traditional mill would add weight and price and by the time you were finished it would be huge, heavy and REALLY expensive).
The grind distribution numbers are really for our edification as much as anything since they reflect only part of the picture. Once we get into the espresso range we don't have enough tiny screens to show much and from observation screens of these small sizes would be very inaccurate. Much of the ratings of the espresso end of the grind range will be necessarily subjective but the size and nature of the burr will again drive the espresso grind....generally middle of the road average espresso...capable, but not dynamic like the Titan conicals.
And no, no Pharos 2.0.....although I keep thinking about using the Pharos burr to make a hand grinder that is operated by turning the outer burr and not the inner, but that one is definitely down the line.....and yes Gary it is true...back in the mists of time Department of Natural Resources, UC Berkeley.