Sunday, July 13, 2008

project espresso pods

the pods
objective:
this one's a request from Jyllian and Isaac for their espresso machine (brand name remains unnamed). she showed me these nice plastic disposable pods that contains the grains. you pop the entire pod into the machine, water goes through it and does the espresso stuff, then the machine tosses the pod in its trash bin. granted it's good espresso, but what a waste for a one-timer! surely this is not the most environmentally friendly thing....so we seek to make it reusable.

snip, grind, and pry
the bottom of one pod can be made to be the lid for the other
challenges/procedure:
there seemed to be two types of pods, one with a filter paper glued to the top (let's call it type 'a'), and the other with a plastic mesh welded to the top of the container (let's call this type 'b'). so for type 'a', simply tear off the filter paper, and make a lid from the bottom of another pod. this will require sabatoging that second pod just for its bottom. type 'b' can be dismantled by snipping and grinding down the weld that holds everything together. you'll be able to pry it apart with a sharp edge.

features:
a reusable pod saves plastic, saves the earth, and ok, you got me, saves money (me cheap!)

conclusion:
keeps me wide awake, wanting to know if it'll work!
project espresso pods: pending!

1 Comments:

At 6:36 AM, Blogger Unknown said...

We (the recipients of this engineering project) tried the gerry-rigged pods last night. Result: great coffee. Two questions remain: Is it worth the effort to pack coffee into that tiny capsule, and what are the long term effects of using plastic exposed to high heat as opposed to some kind of metal.

Great work Wil! you made our night, which lasted a long time due to drinking espresso at 9 pm

 

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