Thought I'd share my reason for backing the Arco.

So over a year ago, I'd bought myself a 1zpresso JX (I think it was the first edition they released with the glass catch cup), and I've been really happy with it apart from a few design flaws and problems that probably should be noted in the dedicated thread for it. Anyway, I looked into motorising it because I was bored and turns out that grinding beans is actually really hard. I followed some tips from the kaffee-netz forum and let's be honest, that poor motor needed a lot better couplings to be able to eke out any amount of torque required.

Here's what I came up with and you can no doubt see the fine layer of dust showing that it managed to work about twice before I realised that getting all the components to not slip was an exercise in complete frustration.



Long story short, I love hand grinding but motorising I am happy to leave to the professionals

Without a gearbox, to increase torque, no chance to use a direct drive solution.
Much simpler is to use a screwdriver, having at least 18 Nm torque in specs.
I say this because measured 11 Nm on a Kinu, i.e. 11 kg force applied on a 10 cm arm during my experiments, and 18 Nm models are the most common class of drivers above this load.

Yeah, I completely underestimated what was needed to grind. Seemingly most of kaffee-netz did too, as this was the motor recommended for the Comandante. Fun project nonetheless!

A turkish company already did the commandante commercial adapter, search some pages ago in this thread for "motordante"

Here's the spec sheets . I am currently using the sieve technique with my porlex for pour over so as you can imagine I can't wait for the delivery !

That carrying case is nice. That alone makes me want to have one. 2.4 inches wide... I guess it's a no for fitting in the areopress

add me to the list of backers (via indiegogo)

Count me in as a backer as well - I'm eager to get my hands on the ARCO at some point this summer. Currently, I have a Baratza Encore and do mostly V60 and Kalita with the odd Aeropress fake-espresso but it's not very pretty to look at, a little slow and quite loud.
For the slow and loud part, I am not actually sure yet how much of a step up the Arco will be - but fingers crossed.

With a heavy heart I just cancelled my Niche order. It was about to be shipped but with Brexit-related additional VAT and import fees, the price would have gone up from ~580€ all the way to ~710€. It just didn't feel right anymore with that additional price bump (Niche has no way around this, not their fault at all - kudos to them for being upfront about this) and that made me switch over to the Arco now.

Thanks to Peter, I feel like this is a project with a lot of heart and science in it. Please make it a good grinder that we're all happy with

G-Iota will make soon Niche guys rethink all their business model...