Yeah, good point. I noticed that 1:40 being mentioned, which sounded weird, but it didn't come to my mind. It also explains why there is a gas strut to return the piston up

From the video, it looks like one stroke moves the piston only something like 1-1.5cm, which is around 30 ccm of volume. That might be ok for me as I do single shots - first stroke would compress the air above the water and make preinfusion, second one would be for extraction. But I'm not sure that most others will be fine about doing doubles in several strokes

I don't understand why always some guys try to improve well proven things ...

But let's hope it's not the case ...

Jonk wrote:There is definitely something unusual about the lever action:





If they mean 1:40 leverage that's about 4x as much as many manual levers, which would also explain the easy pull and why they'd feel the need to install an OPV set to 20 (!) bar.

Actually an interesting idea, I would like to know how it works. How can the user control the pressure at the puck?

Jonk wrote:Like a regular manual lever it seems...

I am unsure how that could work, I mean what happens in the moment between 2 strokes? I would expect some kind of pressure reservoir in between.

Does Superkop use a spring?
You press the lever down with manual power. It is very easy to do because there is a transfer of 1:40.A gas spring is used to return the piston.

Edited because I misread above quote.


From their 9 bar sales pitch I would guess that pressure is fixed but then they also say:

Will it be possible to adapt the pressure applied and or duration of extraction?
Yes, it is possible to adapt the pressure and the duration of the extraction because you do it yourself.

Is there any way to control the pressure?

At the moment, details about mechanism are not known, so we can just guess. However, at the beginning of the page, they indeed say "pull the lever 5 times" and from the video it looks like each pull moves the piston for about a centimeter or so

So you fill the chamber with hot water, mount it and do the first pull. I assume this one will serve for preinfusion - you do it slowly , air between the piston and coffee surface compresses and water starts flowing into the puck. After you decide preinfusion time is over, you return the lever up and immediately proceed with the next pulls applying the force you want for main part of extraction. If you are fast enough, coffee won't stop flowing between the pulls because air between the piston and water will be expanding until its pressure returns to atmospheric pressure and that will continue pushing the water through the puck for a few seconds, but the pressure will decrease. It's probably not a big deal between first and second pull, but between other pulls pressure decrease will be significant, which isn't ideal for espresso because each subsequent pull at the same pressure will produce higher flow

Other problem I see is that the water chamber isn't any bigger than in Robot, so cold metal piston will be taking the heat from the water - probably even more than in Robot, because it looks quite massive

But let's wait for more details ...

They posted an update with a uncut video of a shot. To me it looks like milking a cow, and I like my espresso without milk

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/12 ... ts/3150252

He actually says ekspresso. Wow.

Lever appears to be a ratcheted similar to a car stand. This would explain the many full cycles required and the ease of lever movement. As novel as a wall unit option sounds it fails to generate much sales in the real world, Faema Velox and Strietman ES3 come to mind as previous wall mounted espresso machines.