Upcoming induction espresso machine (Heylo) - Page 5

#41: Post by **Chert** » February 1st, 2023, 12:05 am

gscace wrote:..., They have a big business in superautos. ...

-Greg

Thanks for the information. Great stuff especially the optimized instahot.

Is super auto development where the milk module comes from? At first flush it sounds a bit nasty to have milk circulate up into tubing and adhere there. And the water saved of steam is lost to flushing it seems to me. My beloved La Pavoni came with a cappuccino tube frother, used once just for kicks.

#42: Post by **ira** » February 1st, 2023, 12:08 am

gscace wrote:The implementation in the Heylo is quite nuanced. Outcome is extremely good.

-Greg

So you not willing to say, my assumption was close, but I guess maybe I was or you would have pointed out I was wrong?

#43: Post by **coyote-1** » February 1st, 2023, 9:24 am

It brings induction heating. Anyone who has worked with an induction stove sees the potential advantage of this. Water boils in a fraction of the time of a gas or electric range, while being nowhere near as hazardous to users.

This first induction espresso machine is of course pricey. Like any other tech, the price will eventually fall - and based on the options chosen/provided by the maker, could fall significantly. Right now, this is projected at $5K while the Decent is $4300. And it seems to have similar profiling & programmability.

Tennantscoffee wrote:It *could* be a winner but it will need to bring something to the table that the current products don't...and that will be difficult.

The Aillio Bullet R1 is an induction based coffee roaster and it's a home run because it brings the ability to roast 1k of greens on a standard 110v outlet and it's in a form that you can put under your arm and take somewhere if you want/need. No other roaster does what it does.

Simply making something different doesn't always translate to being useful. Making an induction based espresso machine can work but what will make it's function more useful? Better efficiency? Probably. Is that enough to get people to switch? Probably not.

I think products like this are important. The Decent espresso machine, the Lelit Bianca with flow control, etc are all bringing something to the table that is genuinely *different* than other machines. In the case of Lelit it was bringing a function that was traditionally reserved for much more expensive units down to an affordable price and in the case of Decent it was an unprecedented ability to monitor different aspects of pulling a shot. This will need to do that in order to get a foothold in the espresso world.

#44: Post by **gscace** » February 1st, 2023, 9:32 am

ira wrote:So you not willing to say, my assumption was close, but I guess maybe I was or you would have pointed out I was wrong?

Well your assumptions are quite general and suggest designing to a performance extreme. The engineeriong decisions are way more nuanced. You are correct that induction is an elegant solution.

#45: Post by **espressoren** » February 1st, 2023, 9:53 am

coyote-1 wrote:It brings induction heating. Anyone who has worked with an induction stove sees the potential advantage of this. Water boils in a fraction of the time of a gas or electric range, while being nowhere near as hazardous to users.

This first induction espresso machine is of course pricey. Like any other tech, the price will eventually fall - and based on the options chosen/provided by the maker, could fall significantly. Right now, this is projected at $5K while the Decent is $4300. And it seems to have similar profiling & programmability.

Yeah, I'm intrigued, yet skeptical that induction makes much of a difference. With ranges you have cooking pans that aren't permanently attached, using inductive coupling to transfer heat makes a lot of sense. With a more permanent fixture where you can embed or attach a heater with thermal paste the advantage isn't quite as clear.

Maybe the key advantage is better control. Their solution sounds similar to the Breville thermojet which works pretty well, at least as far as "heats just the water you need, quickly without a boiler" by heating a tube that the water passes through.

February 1st, 2023, 11:45 am

Embedded heaters with a control thermometer are not necessarily that fast. The heater transfers the heat through the element wall to the block (in the case of a thermoblock), and then through the thermoblock to the water. There is significant time lag in doing that and large temperature gradients between the heater and the water. Temperature sensed by the control thermometer is not necessarily the temperature at where the thermoblock and water meet, so there is a lot of art in thermoblock implementation and there are hard limits in speed due to the thermophysical properties of the materials used. Induction offers much higher speed and more precise injection of heat.

-Greg

#47: Post by **Jeff** » February 1st, 2023, 11:46 am

The "interesting" aspect to me is that the mass of the system can be significantly less, at least on 240 V. With a high-mass system like a resistively heated thermoblock, you've got a large amount of heat stored in the block and its heater. With the water flow through the heater being tiny in comparison, you can't quickly reduce temperature. You can throw more power at the system to try to increase temperature quickly, but that has its own limits, including overshoot. With a conventional thermoblock, if you want temperature agility and stability at any flow you need some kind of system like the DE1, that runs a reasonably constant temperature on the heater then mixes cooler water to get the target.

With induction heating it should be possible to reduce the "excess" mass beyond the tubing and make the system more responsive. Whether this is viable on 120 V residential circuits is partly reality, partly implementation, and probably a lot of commercial viability -- 5 g/s raised 80°C is 400 cal/s or about 1675 Watts at 100% efficiency.

#48: Post by **gscace** » February 1st, 2023, 11:53 am

This is correct.

-Greg

February 1st, 2023, 12:02 pm

gscace wrote:We sort of like its quirky look. Within the development group, we've given the espresso module the name "Steve," coined by Aga, who is wont to say "Steve would like to make you a coffee!"

Well, now I've got to get my hands on one!

#50: Post by **dkny3939** » February 1st, 2023, 2:33 pm

I love my induction stove but dont see the benefit of induction in an espresso machine. Induction boils water fast and doesn't heat up the environment as much. Those aren't big deals in espresso.