Downunder55 wrote:Would I be correct in thinking the DE1 platform will be quite static and there will be more ongoing creative development in the DE1+ software platform, and more recipes etc available on-line of us to try, etc etc ? I know it's early days, and your focus is getting some machines ready for market, and I really don't want to take the focus away from this, but is there any sort of road or mind map available for the development of both platforms. I have read your website for the differences in the two machines, but this is more of a conceptual picture.

Conceptually, the DE1 is for people who want to "press a button and have great coffee come out" whereas the DE1+ is for people who "want to understand why the coffee just made is good or bad, and experiment to make their coffee better (or different)"

Our sales so far are split evenly between the DE1 and the DE1+, with about another 30% going to the DE1PRO+, so I think there's demand for all 3 models.

As to the DE1: as we continue to work on it, we'll be trying to make it more accessible to people with less coffee knowledge, and attempting to get it closer to "pick a recipe and go" simplicity. As we think of advanced or groundbreaking features in the world of coffee (such as integrating a scale into making espresso: LOTS of ideas in that direction for better coffee) those ideas will go into the more expensive models.

I've held off with this comment (question) because it might be misconstrued and it may have already been addressed but I'm just wondering about the longevity and durability of a brilliant but highly computerised machine like the Decent. My current setup is a 1995 Elektra A3 and a Micro Casa lever. The A3, with the exception of a strip-down 5 years ago, has run faultlessly for over 20 years. The leva's, with maintenance have gone for decades. The future is the Decent I know but .. oh look I'm just thinking aloud.

decent_espresso wrote:A bit more progress on that bracket. Per your comment (and I agree) I'm trying to move us to a design where the tablet bracket is independent of the group head cover, so that that tablet and bracket can be removed if you want the tablet to be elsewhere. Also, if you prefer the steelie mount style, you can use that instead. The current iteration has the tablet bracket in 2mm powder coated aluminum, screwed into the top of the case, from underneath. I can thus fairly easily be removed, by taking the case top off, and removing two screws.

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decent_espresso wrote: We're going to preserve the customer's ability to remove our bracket, and use their own stand. If you don't like our decision, you can buy yourself a Steelie Stand off Amazon, and put the tablet on top of the machine, or on the side, or mount it into your cabinet. <grin>

Any chance you could mock up a similar bracket that tries to minimize the amount of group head overhang for comparison prior to making your final decision?

mm1854 wrote:Any chance you could mock up a similar bracket that tries to minimize the amount of group head overhang for comparison prior to making your final decision?

Of course! Everything we do goes through several iterations with CNC built one-off components. Otherwise we'd be ordering 500 of a bracket we've never tested, and that would be unwise.

DJF wrote:I've held off with this comment (question) because it might be misconstrued and it may have already been addressed but I'm just wondering about the longevity and durability of a brilliant but highly computerised machine like the Decent. My current setup is a 1995 Elektra A3 and a Micro Casa lever. The A3, with the exception of a strip-down 5 years ago, has run faultlessly for over 20 years. The leva's, with maintenance have gone for decades. The future is the Decent I know but .. oh look I'm just thinking aloud.

You're absolutely right that old lever machines are an old, well understood steam-age technology. They fail in known ways and there's a support network for repairing that.

We're innovating on many fronts, and it's likely that despite our best attempts, we'll learn about ways in which our machines could have been designed differently to avoid some problem. We do know that scale build up is the thing that makes most espresso machines fail, and we think our design (preheating the water tank) is a new, and possibly best solution to that problem, by having scale precipitate in a vessel that can be easily removed and cleaned (rather than a sealed boiler). We're increasing the complexity of an espresso machine, by putting a computer into it, and water mixing, and with those new capabilities comes more things that can fail.

Nonetheless, Toyota famously made highly complicated technical products extremely reliable, so we think we can get there. My goal, right now, is making a great product that is as reliable as we can for v1.0, and have it sell well, so that we are in a good position to provide repairs and revisions to those early customers.

Thanks for clearing that up. My steam age grasp of computer technology makes be a bit of a worrier.

Hi John,

I am vaguely in the market for a new espresso machine and have been half following this. Your project seems very ambitious and I will be very impressed if you can deliver on time.

Seeing as everyone has been giving you input on various bits and pieces, I thought I might as well throw in a quick post about the drip tray cover/grate. This is something that most manufacturers do an abysmal job on and it really should be very simple. To my mind, the #1 priority for a drip tray grate should be to allow liquid to sluice through without anything pooling on top of it. Otherwise, the water, coffee and grounds that invariably pool on top invariably get transferred to the bottom of the cup and then onto wherever the cup is placed - or will require the user to wipe the drip grate down. Anything less is form over function.

To my mind there are four types of drip tray grate. In order of best to worst, they are:

1. Wire grate. This is by far my favourite type of drip tray grate; almost nothing can pool on top. The drawback is that you see more into the drip tray itself. See vesuvius, old ECM manufactured giotto and their other machines, dalla corte.

2. Punched and bent stainless grate. By this I mean that the grate is made from a solid sheet of stainless, which has strips punched out of it and bent down. This minimises the flat areas and the bent bits block most of the view of the contents of the drip tray. These are a sensible compromise between cleanliness and obstructing the view of the mess in the drip tray. I think they aren't as good as the wire grate because they still need a bit of a wipe down. See the original linea (and maybe breville dual boiler; really a hybrid between 2 and 3).

3. Punched stainless grate w/irregular holes. By this I mean that the grate is formed from a solid sheet of stainless, with holes that are punched into it and the material is discarded. The surface is flat. These are usually pretty terrible, as water pools on the top. At least the irregular holes have some benefit in breaking up the water. See bezzera, synesso, current la marzocco.

4. Punched stainless grate w/small and regular holes; usually circular. These are the worst. Liquid pools on top and actually wraps around the holes, rather than draining through them. In some instances, I have even seen espresso form a meniscus over a hole and dry across the hole, blocking it.
Without question to me, Rocket espresso is the absolute market leader in making terrible drip trays and drip tray grates. They are even clearly aware of how crappy their drip trays are - a few years ago they revised the exit hole for the e61 exhaust to be bigger because they clearly know that the machine dumps most of the waste water on top of the grate and little of it actually makes it through to the drip tray. But boy do they look shiny when inexperienced home baristas can't wait to buy them in the showroom! See Rocket giotto and a raft of other machines inc Kees and slayer (though the slayer isn't as bad as many in this category).

From the photos that I have seen, with your machine we are dealing with a category 4 kaiju grate, though it looks from some of the photos like you might have a version with some sort of coating and rolled edges on the holes, but always versions with small, circular holes and lots of flat area.

I appreciate that you might think that there is no real need to flush your machine and you expect that people will manually cut of shots, so it isn't a big deal. But it's 2017. You can control brew temperature with decimal point precision. You can create pressure profiles at will. You can communicate parameters across the world. Can you please build a drip tray grate that works. This is a solved problem. It's not hard. You don't have to be innovative. Just use the wire drip tray grate. I have given up hope that other manufacturers will be practical about it, but I thought it's worth a shot with you.

IMHO, if your grate ever has to be wiped down, you guys get an F on this category.

(Sorry for the rant; you can see that 20 years of wiping down crappy drip trays grates on some of the most expensive machines in existence has really gotten to me!)

Cheers,
Luca

John, just wondering if any thought has been given to a cover for the water tank (tray). I had an old Elektra with an open tank that was fairly well concealed but no matter how clean the surrounding environment was there was always a bit of fine crud that got into the water. Just a thought..

luca wrote:IMHO, if your grate ever has to be wiped down, you guys get an F on this category. (Sorry for the rant; you can see that 20 years of wiping down crappy drip trays grates on some of the most expensive machines in existence has really gotten to me!)

Luca, this fixation/rant of yours is EXTREMELY USEFUL. You're absolutely right to point out that our current design likely pools, because it does, and I do wipe it down all the time. I honestly hadn't realized there was another way.

We've spent a bunch of time designing "cup guide lines" on the drip tray, see photo below, but I think your functional point is much more important to address. Also, it might be possible for us to do a slight circular bend in the wires to still have a guide.

This is an idea we abandoned:


I'm including two photos below, which I believe are the kind of drip tray covers you really like. Can you confirm that?



The problem I've had with the metal wire covers is that they never sit perfectly flat, and they make rattley noise, metal on metal, especially so if the machine is creating vibrations (we have vibe pumps).

How would you feel about a drip tray cover that was a stainless steel frame with a black wire mesh stretched across the top? I think this would provide similar drainage but could look nicer.

DJF wrote:John, just wondering if any thought has been given to a cover for the water tank (tray). I had an old Elektra with an open tank that was fairly well concealed but no matter how clean the surrounding environment was there was always a bit of fine crud that got into the water. Just a thought..

If we put a cover on the water tank, it would have to be removed each time you fill the tank, which is extra work and annoying. We haven't had any crud get into our tank.

What I do propose, and I've tried, is if you want a sealed water tank, a piece of plastic wrap over the top, with the back right corner exposed, works perfectly. The water tank is a ceramic, so plastic wrap sticks to it well. You can choose to punch a 2nd hole in the wrap for water filling, if you like.

Hi John,

decent_espresso wrote:We've spent a bunch of time designing "cup guide lines" on the drip tray, see photo below, but I think your functional point is much more important to address. Also, it might be possible for us to do a slight circular bend in the wires to still have a guide.

This is a cool idea and I applaud you for your original out of the box thinking. However, I think people obsessive enough to spend this sort of money on an espresso machine can probably sort that one out. If you were to have a wire drip tray grate, you could have the wires that run parallel with the drip tray handle positioned so that there are two more or less lining up with each of the streams from a double handle, which might provide the guide that you are aiming to. Whether or not this is worth incurring any expense for is something that I leave you to judge.

decent_espresso wrote:I'm including two photos below, which I believe are the kind of drip tray covers you really like. Can you confirm that?

Yes, as to the first photo. Not too sure as to the second. My now somewhat hazy recollection of the ECM wire grate was that it had bent bits on the side that made contact with the drip tray itself, so I'm not sure that that second photo is right ... or maybe I'm thinking about the ECM veneziano as opposed to the giotto.

decent_espresso wrote:The problem I've had with the metal wire covers is that they never sit perfectly flat, and they make rattley noise, metal on metal, especially so if the machine is creating vibrations (we have vibe pumps).

You are indeed correct that they can warp and rock around a bit. However, I have had punched hole stainless sheet drip tray covers do that too and at least the wire grates are easier to bend back into shape. So I don't think there are really any perfect solutions in this regard. Maybe a hybrid, wherein you take a metal outer frame and weld a wire grate to it, but that sounds expensive to manufacture.

decent_espresso wrote:How would you feel about a drip tray cover that was a stainless steel frame with a black wire mesh stretched across the top? I think this would provide similar drainage but could look nicer.

Grrr ... I missed out a category in my taxonomy of drip tray covers, so now not only am I wierdly obsessive, but I'm not even that thorough about it

This sort of drip tray cover has been used on stuff like the Isomac Tea. It looks like a million bucks new, but has a different drainage problem from what I have seen. The holes in the mesh are too small, so water can form a meniscus across them. You get water hanging down from the wire that creates the holes. When you press down on the top, the water can soak up, so to clean these grates, you sort of need to blot the liquid up with a tea towel. If the liquid is espresso, it can be messy, so you can still get dirty cup bottoms. The surface is also the most abrasive of all of them, so you can sort of shred/sand the bottom of towels or cups that you rub across it. The way in which you attach the mesh to the metal part also seems to be a lose-lose situation. If you have spot welds joining the mesh to the stainless frame from its underside, I can see them popping off easily if too much pressure is applied. If you reinforce this by sandwiching the mesh inbetween two stainless frames, then I would think you're really adding a lot of cost. I guess I would probably lump it in or maybe a bit ahead of category 3 in terms of irritation factor.

The wire drip tray grate works because (a) the circular cross section of the wire means that there isn't really a surface on which liquid can pool and (b) the large rectangular space between the two wires is too large for liquid to form a meniscus across. You are probably right that this is likely to warp for many people. Maybe the solution is to weld it to a sturdy frame, sandwich it in such a frame or build it from very thick gauge wire. The linea classic style grate might offer more resistance to warping, but I have no idea how expensive it would be to manufacture and I think it still probably needs the occasional wipe.

Cheers,
Luca