Hey everyone,
Been having some thoughts re: modifying a grinder to give the right dose consistently using a scale "built-in" to the machine. I was wondering if anyone had attempted this or thought of it.
I have a Compak K3 touch that I was thinking of doing one of the following:
1. Put the whole grinder on a scale, prior to grinding, turning the scale on (self-zeroes), then as beans get ground into the portafilter, the weight of the beans actually ground goes into negative values. You can stop grinding once you've reached your desired weight. The portafilter obviously has to be held "in the air" so that it doesn't contribute to the weight of the entire contraption. From what I can tell, the limiting factor would be precision of scales. It seems that to get precise measurements on the orders of fractions of grams, the scale weight range needs to be small. This wouldn't work with a grinder that is heavy. I have yet to find a scale that can accommodate the weight of a grinder and give that much precision.
2. Build a scale into the portafilter holder (the 2 bars used to support the portafilter). This gets around the above problem by having to support the weight of the portafilter only and of the ground beans. The scale could be adapted to "sit" on the portafilter holder and the portafilter would sit on the scale (perhaps with some sort of cushion or moulding to support the weight?). Once the pf is on, the scale would be turned on, zero-ing the scale with the pf and grinding would begin. The difficulty with this is adapting the scale to sit on the portafilter holder, and ensuring it will give an accurate measurement given that the scale's native feet would not be on a solid surface. Then there is making sure the portafilter stays in place, and that ground coffee makes its way into the basket without having to fiddle...
If either of those 2 would be feasible, the next stage would be to wire the scale and the grinder to some sort of controller where you set the desired weight of ground coffee and go! Obviously this bit would be much more complex, but was thinking of starting with solution number 2 above.
Has anyone had any experience or attempts doing such a mod?
Been having some thoughts re: modifying a grinder to give the right dose consistently using a scale "built-in" to the machine. I was wondering if anyone had attempted this or thought of it.
I have a Compak K3 touch that I was thinking of doing one of the following:
1. Put the whole grinder on a scale, prior to grinding, turning the scale on (self-zeroes), then as beans get ground into the portafilter, the weight of the beans actually ground goes into negative values. You can stop grinding once you've reached your desired weight. The portafilter obviously has to be held "in the air" so that it doesn't contribute to the weight of the entire contraption. From what I can tell, the limiting factor would be precision of scales. It seems that to get precise measurements on the orders of fractions of grams, the scale weight range needs to be small. This wouldn't work with a grinder that is heavy. I have yet to find a scale that can accommodate the weight of a grinder and give that much precision.
2. Build a scale into the portafilter holder (the 2 bars used to support the portafilter). This gets around the above problem by having to support the weight of the portafilter only and of the ground beans. The scale could be adapted to "sit" on the portafilter holder and the portafilter would sit on the scale (perhaps with some sort of cushion or moulding to support the weight?). Once the pf is on, the scale would be turned on, zero-ing the scale with the pf and grinding would begin. The difficulty with this is adapting the scale to sit on the portafilter holder, and ensuring it will give an accurate measurement given that the scale's native feet would not be on a solid surface. Then there is making sure the portafilter stays in place, and that ground coffee makes its way into the basket without having to fiddle...
If either of those 2 would be feasible, the next stage would be to wire the scale and the grinder to some sort of controller where you set the desired weight of ground coffee and go! Obviously this bit would be much more complex, but was thinking of starting with solution number 2 above.
Has anyone had any experience or attempts doing such a mod?


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