gareth78 wrote:That post did seem to describe something of a more harmonious relationship, the recent post and comments from Discommon is suggestion anything but. I think it reasonable given how open the Decent journey has been to expect some considered response. There are more than a few current and future owners who feeling a bit uncomfortable, and when you look at how the whole Felicita scales copying Acaia was handled are finding this a little unpleasant.

I did have a friendly conversation last week with the owner of the design firm that did the design that inspired Bengle, and all was cool, and we were talking about working on a project together. So... I was surprised to see them post an IG story calling on their followers to leave a comment about what they now felt was a rip-off. A DM would have been a bit more professional.

The previous week, I had posted on IG a credit and photo of the design, and the design firm owner was post #1 with some friendly words:


At any rate, I'm sorry the public conversation went this way -- lots of people were interested in that design, but we're not going to make something that's going to cause a persistent sense of ill will from somebody whose work Ben & I really admire.

When outsourcing fails... you DIY

Part of the legacy of COVID is that many of our suppliers fired skilled workers during the shutdown periods in order to avoid bankruptcy. They are now lacking skilled personnel, and the quality is poorer. One place we've seen that is in paint-work, which (for wood) has been impossible for us to get at a quality we will accept.

Our woodturning supplier doing everything by computer-controlled lathe, so the quality is unchanged. However, these handles then went to a painting company, who three times did an unacceptable job and ruining the batch of handles. In the end, we lost patience, and told them to "just sent us the raw wood handles, we'll finish them ourselves".

Alfred, our recent hire from a few months, is a Albanian who worked as a general home builder in the UK for 6 years, and seemingly can do most anything. We've given him a room to convert into his own shed, and a budget to replace all the mediocre tools with good stuff. And he's really tidy! Luckily for us, he married a HK Woman in the UK, and they moved here.

I asked Alfred to trial several different varnish products and present me with samples. In the end, I really liked the natural color this choice produced. Alfred coats them once, lets them dry, then sands them, and then applies a second coat.

He's done about 400 handles this way now, so that we finally have natural wood handles in stock that I can be proud of.

Sometimes, you just have to do-it-yourself.

Better wheels for our coffee carts

There are some slightly annoying things about the IKEA BROR carts https://www.ikea.com/us/en/p/bror-work- ... -30333286/ we use for our coffee carts:
- the bigger BROR cart legs cannot take wheels for feet
- the small BROR table has legs for wheels that you can swap into the bigger BROR
- but the wheels are low quality, tend to lock by accident, and wear flat very easily

I wanted to address these wheely issues with the IKEA BROR cart.
https://decentespresso.com/c?s=75741+1+ ... 91+1+290+1
We're now selling a wheel adaptor bracket:
- it works on the bigger BROR table
- lets you use heavy duty 3rd party wheetls, including really big, outdoor-grade wheels
- here are two examples from Amazon that work with our bracket: https://www.amazon.com/WHARSTM-Locking- ... 0814S923Z/ https://www.amazon.com/Industrial-Repla ... 07HLK1XPT/

We also sell nice looking long black bolts so that you can put printed side boards around, to hide the tubing and generally make things prettier:

Here are the BROR tops and accessories we're selling, to help you easily & cheaply make your own coffee cart:
https://decentespresso.com/c?s=75741+1+ ... 91+1+290+1

More info here:
https://public.3.basecamp.com/p/ef7JJeQ ... eXk59xJjLC

-john

I am ready to order XXL and I'd like to try to do the wiring myself. Could be fun. Would be helpful if somebody could advise me what kind of wire and outlet should I use. 10/4 or 12/3? Would be great to see a picture of Decent 220V power cords, I could not find then via Google.
Thanks.

It's a NEMA6-15 plug, looks like this:



Argh, there is supposed to be a picture of it on the https://decentespresso.com/accessories page but it's a broken JPG. Fixing now...



Ok, fixed now, here's a photo of the cable we send you with the USA DE1XXL:

As we've decided to drop the Bengle-design direction, we're casting a wider net, and talking to a variety of designers, as part of reimagining what a Decent Espresso Machine might look like.

On DeviantArt.com I've made contact with a few artists I like and have commissioned concept drawings from them. If you have any artists on that site you like, please post them here, and I'll take a look.

I'm also running a contest on designcrowd.com but so far the results are not inspiring.

Decent customer "espressoSquirrel" worked on his own redesign idea, both tabletop and countersunk, and I feel they're inspired.

However, I do feel it's not a mass-audience look, so it's not likely something Decent would do right now.

I would love for us to either get the point where we could do a 30 machine run of a design like that, but currently we can't. I can't make enough plain-black-box DE1 to keep up with orders.

I am encouraging espressoSquirrel and others to continue to post their ideas, because there are some people in the Decent Diaspora (such as the super-productive Sheldon Wong) who very much do know how to build things, and one of them might want to cooperate with him.

And I'll continue to post inspired designs here as I receive them.

-john

Looks super retro...not sure this fits with such a modern appliance?

Certainly not a design I'd buy, unlike the last one which I really liked.

Ira

Decent customer/designer "espressoSquirrel" continues his creative burst with a design homage to Elon Musk's Tesla Truck.

Edit: people do not seem to understand this is a joke, and not a serious proposal!

decent_espresso wrote:Edit: people do not seem to understand this is a joke, and not a serious proposal!

Perhaps because it looks awesome