This is my machine that I modified. I have hobbies in electronics, and I have applied it to my other hobby which is coffee. I added 2 PID controllers which regulate the two individual boilers in the machine. One for the brew boiler and one for the steam boiler. The controllers initiate the solid state relays which completes the AC circuit to the heaters attached to the boilers. I can set the temperature of the boilers to whatever I want. The temperature is regulated constantly at my desired set point; this allows me to replicate good espresso shots every time. Also the digital timer allows me to pull espresso shots automatically so I do not have to manually turn off the pump.
The cost of the total project was $400 which is an extremely good price for a dual boiler espresso machine. (I bought a used kitchen aid pro line dual boiler espresso machine(parts made by gaggia). The cheapest dual boilers cost $2000 on average.
I actually own 2 retired commercial grinders. One is a astoria super Jolly (as seen in the video) The other is a Rossi RR45 (not in the video; its in my school’s shop, designing another 3d print chute). A good grinder is essential for high quality coffee as it ensures all coffee particles will extract at the same rate. The cheapest grinder for espresso will require you to spend a minimum of $200. FYI my grinders average around $1000 a piece when purchased new.
Coffee used in the video is red bird espresso (1 week old). Coffee is considered stale after 1 month of roasting. Flavors during this stale period will be mute. You will not taste flavors like berries, peanut butter, chocolate, mangos ,etc. with stale coffee.
Parts I used:
-2 PIDs(auber clones from ebay seller name is happybuyersstore or globalbuyersstore)
-sestos digital timer (B2E AC version…IMO better than Auber timer for this particular application)
-rancilio v1 steam wand
- 12v wall plug adapter from an old home phone to power the PIDs (they run on 12v dc .5-1 amp is safe to use)
- Safety 3 amp fuse to protect the controllers from excessive current
-Project box was extracted from a broken ATX computer power supply
-terminal block
-14 gauge wire
for those curious of how I modified my machine please check out my flikr album:
The link above shows how I planned, designed, and built my espresso machine.
I hope you enjoyed this video.
This video is meant for my university applications so negative comments will be removed.
Post time: Aug-18-2017