Here's a wild idea that would most certainly increase the price, but would be awesome for those that wouldn't mind paying for it.

I have a car that is fairly ergonomic and automatic. It has driver profiles, a backup camera, navigation and lights that automatically turn on and off without me having to worry about ever doing it. When I drive a car without any of these 'great to have' features I immediately feel sad!

I'd like to propose that, at least, some thought can be put into bean profiling. This might be a little too much tech at this point in grinder innovation, but a handful of programmable bean profiles where, at the touch of a button, the grind changes to a setting you stored according to a certain bean type or roast level. I know there's little movement in the grind setting with large conicals. But, I can typically be grinding both a fresh set of beans and a frozen set of beans in the same session. This requires that I shift my grind size during a session. It is kind of a PITA.

It might be a useless tech to introduce, but in my experience, I would rather be pushing a button and having the burrs change automatically than spinning the gears back and forth myself.

Useless, but cool?

Is turning a knob to a setting you have on a sticky note that hard? If it was electric you would have to tell the grinder which bean it was anyway. It would probably be easier to twist from "5" to "4.5" than go through a menu. You would be paying an extra ~200-500 for the benefit of looking at a screen rather than knob, and it would be slower.

Actually, pressing a button is easier than loosening the screw, then shifting the setting and then tightening the screw. A button press is not slower than that. That's the same difference as someone telling me that it's not worth the price to have a car automatically set up my drivers seat and mirrors because it's not hard to reset everything again after your wife was done changing everything to her preferences. Well, I like the convenience so it's worth it. I would like to be able to store set grind levels on a grinder if I am usually pulling two to three different coffees. Having said that, what I essentially want is the ability to change grind size at the push of a button/electronically instead of what I'm doing right now. Is that so ridiculous?

/edit looking back at the renderings, if the adjustment is as easy as what I'm looking at than that'll suffice. My sentiment above is no different! I want dialling in the coffee to be as easy as possible.

pinky-and-me wrote:There is a decent amount of talk about conical vs flat and particle distribution that both types produce, would be nice if you have some option to use large flat burrs (maybe 80+mm)?
Also I've noticed (and read about other peoples' experiences) that having an auger pushing the beans down into the burrs could be beneficial when single dosing without the weight of beans in the hopper.
I have an HG-One and while I'm very happy with it at the moment the above two options would be a very compelling reason for me to spend money on another grinder.

I too would be interested in a large flat burr option as I prefer the taste profile more. The auger and flat burr design would probably make the project completely different but it would make me not bother with Bunzilla nor a Ditting KR1203. It would also give me an excuse to keep the HG One.

You guys are awesome, thanks for all the input!

cmin wrote:Personally I would forget about the smaller burr set, 38mm is too small, I single dose a Preciso (40mm) and it works great as almost no retention however its not as good in the cup as the Vario and forget about others like the HG-One that are worlds better.

It is good that you brought this up. Large burrs seem to be what people expect from a grinder like this, so I suppose that's what people shall get. However, personally I haven't yet thoroughly understood why larger is better in this regard. With my logic if the burr geometry and other aspects are kept same, and the burr surface area is increased, only throughput should be affected.

pinky-and-me wrote:There is a decent amount of talk about conical vs flat and particle distribution that both types produce, would be nice if you have some option to use large flat burrs (maybe 80+mm)?

angman wrote:The auger and flat burr design would probably make the project completely different but it would make me not bother with Bunzilla nor a Ditting KR1203.

This conical vs flat discussion is very interesting, especially from the taste profile point of view. Judging from all the discussions we've had with different people, this seems to be a matter of preference of taste profiles. The reason why we have our minds set on conicals at this point is that they suit the vertical flow of beans and grounds better. For example, the conical burrs feed the ground coffee nicely straight down to the portafilter below, whereas from flat burrs the grounds exit horizontally and have to be directed or mechanically sweeped to the PF. It would of course be possible to either mount the motor and axle horizontally to have the flat burrs in a vertical set-up, like Mahlkoenig EK43, or have gears to change the angle in the axle. Both are pretty big changes to the design at this point. It would be of course nice to offer both options. We will keep this opportunity in mind as we go.

An auger to feed the beans is intriguing! However, like you said it might be difficult to accommodate at this point, but we'll definitely look into it.

Spitz.me wrote:I want dialling in the coffee to be as easy as possible.

We want this too. Going back and forth between filter and espresso for example is a total pain with my current equipment. Also it is really hard to get a precise reading of where exactly is the sweet spot for any given purpose, and to reset the grinder to that. Especially in the espresso range, where a minute change makes a difference, but two beans (say Monsoon Malabar and Yirgacheffe for example) can be quite far from each other. We will make the change procedure, even a big change, of grind size such that it requires only a twist of a dial. No lock-rings, no worm gears.

Making the adjustments repeatable is not as easy, and the bean profiling you suggested is an interesting solution. That would indeed be bringing it to this millenium, but like you noted it is a bit too complicated for now. But hey, maybe in version 2.0. =) We have other ideas for that version, too. And for this version, we are approaching this issue from a simplified standpoint. If we make the housing of the grinder of steel, we can use small magnets to mark our settings along the dial. Think tiny chess pawns in different colours. Easy to use and steplessly adjust, easy and cheap to make. The user would still have to remember which colour is which setting, though.

trumz wrote:Terveisia Savonlinnasta!

Terveisiä sinnekin, mukavaa loppuvuotta! =)

Blue Bean wrote:The reason why we have our minds set on conicals at this point is that they suit the vertical flow of beans and grounds better. For example, the conical burrs feed the ground coffee nicely straight down to the portafilter below, whereas from flat burrs the grounds exit horizontally and have to be directed or mechanically sweeped to the PF. It would of course be possible to either mount the motor and axle horizontally to have the flat burrs in a vertical set-up, like Mahlkoenig EK43, or have gears to change the angle in the axle.

How does the Mahlkönig K30 Vario work? It's a flat horizontal burrs grinder and as far as I can tell it relies on gravity and velocity to push the ground coffee out.
I assume your prototype has a vertical axle coming from top and if so you can mount the bottom flat burr to it while you move the top burr up and down to adjust the grind. If you have a cylinder around the bottom burr that would deflect the ground coffee it would simply fall down and whatever you use right now to collect and funnel it to the PF would work in the same way.
And if you mount something like an Archimedes' screw above the top burr you would probably completely eliminate popcorning (as long as it's a decent length) while you provide a controlled flow to the burrs without any beans on top affecting it.

Anyway, just something that might work...

Greatly appreciate your work since I definitely won't do it

I may have been long-winded in my suggestion to have the ability to store grind levels because it seems to have come across as something much more intricate than I imagined.

I wouldn't have called my idea, 'Bean Profiling', it was more about being able to make ball-park changes almost instantly without the fuss involved with locking, unlocking and winding. It was about programming profiles of grind levels, not beans necessarily. For instance, I know the tick or two I can go to on the K10 dial to get my two more regular blends dialled in almost instantly. At the same time, I grind other espresso beans for my wife and he lattes. If I know both of those grind settings, I would rather program them and change them at the push of a button than do what I normally do. That's it. I wasn't trying to profile varietals and roast levels as much as I was trying to profile the coffee I buy.

Either way, simplifying the process is a step in the right direction and a dial will suffice in this regard!

bostonbuzz wrote:Is turning a knob to a setting you have on a sticky note that hard? If it was electric you would have to tell the grinder which bean it was anyway. It would probably be easier to twist from "5" to "4.5" than go through a menu. You would be paying an extra ~200-500 for the benefit of looking at a screen rather than knob, and it would be slower.

The "KISS Principle" is my motto because Murphy's Law will come into play and as we all know, if something can go wrong, it will eventually

Simple=less $$$
Simple=smaller footprint
Simple=ease of operation
Simple=more portable with less chance of damage

A pencil is a nice simple thing, it makes reference marks that can easily be erased and as the beans age the mark can be moved.