Heating Things Up

We began with an idea: an assembly line coffee maker. We had no clue what that would mean or look like, but we had a dream.  Having an idea of where we wanted to end up we looked at what it takes to make coffee: hot water, coffee beans, a filter, and a cup. Knowing what needs to happen in order to make a cup of coffee, we decided to begin by working on a temperature controlled water heating system to heat the water to a toasty 90 degrees Fahrenheit. 

​Project Ideation

​Once we knew what the system needed to do, we ideated on how to accomplish each task. For instance, when designing the heating system, we explored several options before deciding on the immersion heater that presently heats the water

Pour-Tower Prototyping 

We decided to let gravity do the work and have the water heater reside directly above where the cup would be placed. In order to do so we needed to design and build a tower to house the water heating and pouring system, filter, and the cup itself.

Pan-Tilt Pouring

In order to simulate the spiral pouring motion used in pour-over brewing, we created a pan-tilt to distribute the water evenly across the grinds. Two servos power the mechanism to provide the two ranges of motion and trigonometric functions varying with time create the spiral motion.

Heating Regulation

Using a thermistor and a feedback loop we were able to make a system to heat the water to 90 degrees Fahrenheit and keep it within three degrees of that temperature. 

Sprint 2