We’ve all been worn out by cheap kinky hoses. So you’re leaving for work and notice that your flowers are dying and need to throw some water on them real quick. You go to drag the hose out to where you need it and then run back to the house to turn it on. After cranking on the faucet you run back to the end of the hose to water the flowers. Pull the trigger on your nozzle and….. nothing.
There are many different ways to skin a cat as there are to make a kink resistant hose. Here is a neat one I came across while disassembling the coffee maker for a one-on-one cleaning session. I didn’t get to what I wanted to clean but I sure got some cool pictures.
Notice a small spring is used within the hose. It starts prior to the arc in the hose and ends shortly after. This provides internal support that keeps the hose from kinking. In this case they’re simply using it because they have a tight radius to bend around. In some cases this method can also be used to prevent hose collapse under high vacuum. Typically you would use a hose designed to withstand the vacuum, however sometimes these problems don’t creep up until the products hit the production line.
If you can appreciate things like this then we may be the right design house for you. On the other hand, If you’re really on top of your game you’ll tell us that we should appreciate a better design instead of a quick fix like this! Either way, we’d love to talk. Give us a call or fill out our easy inquiry form.
So here we have a Delonghi Magnifica super automatic espresso machine. This is one beautiful piece of machinery. I’m not saying this because of its aesthetic characteristics but because of how well it performs. After using a manual machine with a blade-type grinder to make espresso every morning, upgrading to a super automatic is like a dream come true!
Many espresso/coffee purists would say that a super automatic machine is akin to taking a Geo Metro and putting tires from a Ferrari on it hoping for Ferrari-like performance. I disagree. When you consider the quality of the result combined with the time/hassle savings, it becomes a no-brainer.
Down to business… Check out this first video showing the basic brewing of a shot of espresso. It shows what a “good” shot should look like with the crema on top. I muted the sound as its rather uninteresting.
Next we have the video with the door open. Those clever guys over at Delonghi spared no expense when it comes to fault detection (door switch, water level, used espresso puck level, mineral buildup counter, etc). As a result, a paring knife was used to overide the door switch. I will go into more detail in the up coming days as to what does what.
Here is what’s happening in this video:
The carriage (black plastic with red tabs) is moving from its brewing location down to its home position. We also call this the dump position. This is the position where it dumps off any pucks of ground espresso. If you watch the video closely, you can see the flapper moving away and slapping the buck into the bin (there is no puck yet but if there was, that is what it’d do).
Now the carraige moves up to the grind location. The grinder will grind beans (after user selects serving size button) found in the hopper on the top of the machine. The grinds will fall out of the grinder and into the top of the carriage.
The carriage now moves up and to the right. When it does this you’ll notice after it stops, it moves slightly up again. It is actually compressing (tamping) the grinds into the carriage. Typically, on a manual machine this is done by hand with a tamper. Because this machine has a combined brewing head and tamper, it is able to stay at location after compressing the grinds to brew.The machine will immediately start the pump to begin the brew cycle. It does something called pre-brewing where by it wets the grinds down and waits a few seconds for them to saturate. This allows for a better shot of espresso. After the grinds are wetted it will execute the remainder of the extraction. In this video you’ll notice that the shot has an awefull lot of crema on top. I found it interesting myself how much more there was when the door was open and the espresso was falling straight into the glass instead of through the machine’s shoot. I believe I may have my grinder set too fine and will have to check into it.
After the extraction is complete, the carriage returns to the lower position and simulataneously ejects the puck of spent espresso grinds.
The carriage returns up to the grinder to wait for you to request another excellent shot (or 2) of espresso.
Either way, we’d love to talk. Give us a call or fill out our easy inquiry form.