RTM wrote:My personal opinion is that horizontal motor shaft design of grinder is superior to vertical, soley for motor cleanliness.

That's confusing since we're talking about burr orientation not shaft orientation, so I think you're saying that you prefer vertically oriented burrs.

Why would vertical burrs necessarily wear out faster on one side? Yes, the beans fall only onto the face of one side of the burrs but isn't the entire diameter of the burrs rotating onto that side so that the entire burr set is engaged with the grinding all the time? The faster the rotation speed, the more this effect seems to me to be in operation...

yakster wrote:That's confusing since we're talking about burr orientation not shaft orientation, so I think you're saying that you prefer vertically oriented burrs.

I noticed that too, so we should keep in mind: vertical burrs = horizontal motor/shaft.

Some people (including video-bloggers) say Sculptor is similar to a sewing machine. ARAMSE was in shock because of that! Believe me, it's not the worst. My current white Niche Zero is similar to a toilet.

Ursego wrote:I noticed that too, so we should keep in mind: vertical burrs = horizontal motor/shaft.

My bad- for some reason I was mixing up the rotational axis to the burr plane
With that I agree we should call it by the Burr plane

Horizontal shaft = vertical burrs

Primacog wrote:Why would vertical burrs necessarily wear out faster on one side? Yes, the beans fall only onto the face of one side of the burrs but isn't the entire diameter of the burrs rotating onto that side so that the entire burr set is engaged with the grinding all the time? The faster the rotation speed, the more this effect seems to me to be in operation...

I've got a Mahlkönig Guatemala, spinning at a whopping ~2850 RPM. The grinder was used in a shop before I bought it, the kind unaware about maintenance .. The burr chamber was actually pretty much clean, but the bottom half of the static burr noticeably more worn. It had ground a lot of beans, at first I mistook the thick layer of caked on fines on the gasket for the actual gasket

As for the topic, there are upsides and downsides with both orientations. I often wonder about how much pre-breaking the augers actually do, possibly not as much on some models as people seem to think. For home use I think the overall implementation is more important than burr orientation.