Decent Espresso news - Page 49

#481: Post by **mooky** » April 12th, 2021, 6:55 pm

decent_espresso wrote:
I feel that we could do a lot better at eliciting a "Wow" as well as fitting into more existing spaces.

What do you think?

-john

While I quite like how simple a Decent looks, it's design language is not a million miles from a "tower chassis" - you could probably put a mock floppy drive and people would think it was an old Dell

That said, I find it refreshingly different as IMO most espresso machines are very ugly - gratuitous chrome lipstick on a metal pig. (The prima one looks pretty though)

What does the decent look like if the current shape was entirely brushed stainless steel?

April 12th, 2021, 9:41 pm

mooky wrote:John, some things you said about HK culture "tell us what, don't tell us how" reminded me of Ricardo Semler - have you read any of his stuff?

I didn't know about Semler, but spent an interesting 2 hours reading about his ideas on the web this morning. Thanks for the ref.

I'm not sure I'd call my structure a democracy at all. More like a village of specialists.

I was very inspired by this in Seoul, Korea, sadly being destroyed:
https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2019 ... ring-heart

instead of 'teams' I try to find a way for 1 person to be actually responsible for something (or a group of things), but never is it a team for that 1 thing. Responsibility for quality, speed, reliability is then squarely with that person.

For instance, experienced home builder Alfred Nenada built last week a tool for expanding the water filters we buy to a precise size:

However, quality checks on the water filters afterwards, and posted to our internal forum, saw about 30% of those expanded now had slight defects and were unuseable:

Because Alfred is the one entirely responsible for this task (building the jig, expanding the filters, testing them) it's clearly on him to rectify this, and totally within his power to do so (no approvals or teamwork needed).

That's not really a democracy.

Literally (pun intended) this looks more like Ayn Rand's ridiculed (and let's face it, ridiculous) village of expert single craftspeople at the end of Atlas Shrugged. But maybe there's something useful in that notion...

#483: Post by **mooky** » April 13th, 2021, 4:38 pm

decent_espresso wrote:I didn't know about Semler, but spent an interesting 2 hours reading about his ideas on the web this morning. Thanks for the ref.

I'm not sure I'd call my structure a democracy at all. More like a village of specialists.

I wouldn't have characterised his stuff as democracy so much as decentralised decision-making and shifting control (& responsibility!) down to the guys on the production line. By taking ownership, the people actually doing the job are free to make changes/improvements & own the results (positive or negative).

Maybe just a question of scale. In your case it's invariably a single person.

IIRC Maverick is his first book & the most insightful. Lots of interesting anecdotes.
7day weekend more for when you want to retire

April 14th, 2021, 3:40 pm

I'm curious if anyone in the United States has tried using the XXL model on a cart while powered by a battery or an external power supply of some kind...? I'm curious how powerful the energy output would need to be to comfortably operate the machine for an hour or two per use?

I ask because I know some power storage units can output in 220V, so this may be easier than having an electrician setup a 220V outlet at home, and it also provides the chance for vending without the difficulty of finding a 220V plugin.

Excuse my ignorance if any of this is worded insufficiently. I am more versed in coffee than I am the principles of electricity lol.
This all stems from my enthusiasm to attempt to get an XXL model and my apprehension surrounding the logistics. Any info would be appreciated.

April 14th, 2021, 11:39 pm

mooky wrote:I wouldn't have characterised his stuff as democracy so much as decentralised decision-making and shifting control (& responsibility!) down to the guys on the production line. By taking ownership, the people actually doing the job are free to make changes/improvements & own the results (positive or negative).

Not really on topic of coffee, but on the topic of how Decent runs, so let's continue for a second...

I mentioned democracy as that's how Wikipedia repeatedly characterizes Semler:

best known for its radical form of industrial democracy
his philosophy of industrial democracy.
 He founded ...a democratic school where children from 0 to 14 years old engage in projects of their interest

and a key element of Semler's ideas seem to be around sharing ownership with employees.

Decent doesn't do that (share ownership). Instead we pay our HK staff above-market, feed them well (daily free luncheons by a staff chef) and keep everyone's jobs to a sane 40h (except recently where we offer them 2x pay to work saturday, and it's voluntary only). We do also have regular work hours (9a to 6p, 1h for lunch) unlike Semler's flex-time.

That being said, there is a LOT of Semler that I really like.

April 14th, 2021, 11:56 pm

ThoughtsUnthought wrote:I'm curious if anyone in the United States has tried using the XXL model on a cart while powered by a battery or an external power supply of some kind...? I'm curious how powerful the energy output would need to be to comfortably operate the machine for an hour or two per use?

I ask because I know some power storage units can output in 220V, so this may be easier than having an electrician setup a 220V outlet at home, and it also provides the chance for vending without the difficulty of finding a 220V plugin.

Excuse my ignorance if any of this is worded insufficiently. I am more versed in coffee than I am the principles of electricity lol.
This all stems from my enthusiasm to attempt to get an XXL model and my apprehension surrounding the logistics. Any info would be appreciated.

Here's a bit of a crazy idea, but you could use a 240V generator:
https://www.amazon.com/WEN-DF475T-4750- ... 07M8FFS51/

I just recommended that to a cafe in the USA that wants to run our DE1XXL model on a mobile coffee cart.

April 15th, 2021, 1:09 am

The more I learn about the Decent company and John the more I would have liked to spend just a bit more for the DE1+,though that model is not even an option right now. Maybe in the future I will have an opportunity to be a proud owner of a decent machine. Anyway, thank you John and Decent team for all you do for our coffee community such as taking the time to write to us folks here in this forum.

To conclude, in regards to a mobile coffee cart (something I may want to pursue in the next 6-12 months) would you say that the steam power of the XL would struggle too much for multiple back to back drinks in comparison to the XXL? (As I write this I wonder if there will be all new firmware and hardware updates that will make this question irrelevant in that 12 month span)

April 15th, 2021, 1:32 am

learntheharvway wrote: To conclude, in regards to a mobile coffee cart (something I may want to pursue in the next 6-12 months) would you say that the steam power of the XL would struggle too much for multiple back to back drinks in comparison to the XXL? (As I write this I wonder if there will be all new firmware and hardware updates that will make this question irrelevant in that 12 month span)

If you're comparing a DE1XXL on 240V to a DE1XL on 120V, the difference is massive.

The XXL is about 65% faster at steaming.
https://decentespresso.com/compare

Generally, cafes complain about our steaming time on our 120V models

But we get no complaints about steaming on the DE1XXL, where they tell us it is "normal pro level steam" as compared (most often) to La Marzocco machines.

April 15th, 2021, 5:42 am

Countersunk Decent Scale

Decent customs Euan Lake recently posted a design for a drip tray cover that integrates and Acaia scale. He made his design free-to-3D-print yourself, as well as offering his own powder-coated metal one that you can buy from him. Best of both worlds!

I wondered if we could pull off the same thing for the about-to-ship Decent Scale.

Above is our first attempt at the idea. We make replacement drip tray cover, with bent wires to hold the scale in place. A USB cable to permanently power the scale snakes out the side through a gap in the cover.

Why do this?

No need with unplumbed setups: at the moment, if your drip tray is not plumbed in, there are excellent scale adaptors that go under the drip tray. These were designed by the Decent Diaspora community. Some are free to print,

However, if you plumb in your drip tray, the drainage tube interferes with the scale, and we currently have no good solution to that.

The idea above would work for plumbed in setups.

I've read about people doing something similar with Acaia scales, and that a common problem is that the drip tray pools water, eventually drowning the scale. I'm hoping to avoid that problem with our design, since no pooling is likely to occur with an all-wires support.

With the idea above, the scale is supended about 7mm above the bottom of the drip tray. Hopefully that will be enough distance to avoid water coming back up into the scale.

For now... we need to make one of these, and test test test....

-john

#490: Post by **sew83** » April 15th, 2021, 10:08 am

Current version is really great, unfortunalely it is not yet avalaible for me.
But there are some ideas I would welcome in new iteration:
- scale integrated in drip, it could not only be integrated to software and used for making espresso, but also for weighing milk in jug, or even beans before grinding
- temperature sensor in steam wand to check milk temperature which could introduce autostop frothing when given temp will be achived
- AI which could support profiling i.e. it could detect roast of beans, grind and suggest best profile for given coffee type. But it would involve machine learning based on users habits and data science...that would be something

BR
Seweryn