Teardown Tuesday-ish random dumpster dive!
What parts can we salvage from and automated coffee machine? and how does it work?
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I am down in the dumpster room and I posted a Twitter photo for this some coffee machine I know Jack all about coffee and I said I'm not gonna touch it but then people want it like a TV on. So okay yeah. copy machine thingamabob. You know, completely a shopping trolley.

All right. All right. So people wanted me to look at this thing. some people did.

anyways. it's a coffee machine thing I have no idea about this. I don't drink coffee. don't like the stuff.

It's an acquired taste. I never acquired and I don't know I'm being typed things going here and it grinds them up and coffee comes out the front like that's all I know. Anyway, um, but apparently it's lit because it's like it's gonna grind stuff up. Its got like motors and stuff so it could make an interesting, not destructive a teardown.

I'm sure. So yeah, this is not going back together. So for those who want to I think a second is to destroy a coffee machine Wow Tough luck women. rip it apart.

It's probably got like coffee Dustin Yeah, dust, no coffee? Anyway, stare at the path. So here it is. It's a big, a bit of a big beast and there's no point. Oh dear, if you're wondering why some of my videos are in 4k and some aren't.

Some times 4k just isn't warranted like this thing. Huge thing here. So at 1080p, 60 frames per second, it is. Whoo! It's got safety tag.

Look. Um, if you don't know about these safety tags, it's it's legislation here in Australia that you know all these mains cords especially in like businesses are supposed to have these tags. I'm not sure how well enforce it is, but like the large companies are paranoid about this sort of stuff and we're the guy. Come around and it was like a couple of bucks per tag or even like five dollars at a to come around.

It was like a license to print money is plug it into you testing machine. Yep, you know, press a button. A couple seconds later it spits out a tag, you whack it on and then five bucks. Thank you very much.

Anyway, this is a cafe Char I David over there reckons it's a it's Matt and he's a coffee dude I Have no idea what this stupid thing here does. You know it did squirts, frosted up or something I think shoots hot steam. There you go David knows he's a barista Reed dude he's like into his you know coffee connoisseur I weep for the future Anyway, it's got to be one of the cheapest things around. It's just all plastic.

he just did cheap Chinese ium stuff. It's just like it's really the it feels like just creepy quality. I'm gonna take this crap apart in my lab. Really like.

what do you people want I mean it's just ridiculous. It's gonna go everywhere like that's some the hopper mechanism or something I don't know it's got an o-ring on there, whatever this is and then meets up with this thing up here. I Got no clue. Yeah.

Finest crust and crud you can get from the dumpster. Terrific stuff. people. Drink this crap.

Presume that that's waste excrement. There's the money shot for you being aficionados. It smells putrid. people.
Drink this rubbish. Figured out those screws inside the beans and take it off and all the beans fall out. Yeah, okay. I have a bean containment.

This is quite funny as a connector in there plugs into this ring. It looks like we have a literal bean counter. look yeah, looks like there's a lid under here and a photo trainee on the other side and it. I Guess it counts.

the beans coming through. How does it? I don't you'd have to look at the mechanism. Does it allow them through one by one? I don't know. Anyway, yeah, that's for bean counting.

I think I'm going to have to overexpose the crap out of this, but it looks like that's our been grinding mechanism. You see angled walls down in there, looks pretty robust and then I guess they fall down through there at an angle and then grind against these outer things and then fall through the bottom. I'm presuming looks like this whole panel. it's gonna come off maybe and this thing just rotates a couple of notches.

it like I don't know. sets the threshold of the grind or something. See some interesting stuff in here. Zero number for those playing along at home.

I Was gonna say like twelve to fourteen hundred watts to grind coffee. What is this A bloody? You know, the juicy row of coffee machines. but now I presume it's got a heater in to make it hottie. There's our mains input.

They'd gone to a fair bit of effort, there was a nice clamp on the input and they've got like, you know, proper block for the properly crimped mains can earth connection. and they've even got little wire guides out there for the active and neutral into the terminal block. That's pretty nice. First things: Salvage Perfectly good Death Lead Ripper If we take that site lid off, check out inside here.

Look at this. This is pretty jazzy. Yeah. Input chokes.

They're all very nice. You know you can salvage those salvaged your input caps. It's all. It's all very nice.

We've got a whole bunch of moths down there. One two, three, four five. we've got a there's a Ptc over there, got our bridge rectifier and jeez, that's quite jazzy. I've got some sort of pump thing happening here I'm not sure what the deal is there, but once again, you know you can salvage all those.

Okay, so looks what looks like happening. and once again I don't know the flow of how these things work. so I'm just winging it. So bear with me this box up here which had this there you go, this thing here which looks like it had never been used.

It is that looks like it's what. they hold some sort of liquid because it's got max on there and then so that goes through here that goes into the tube over to uh, is that uh, that's not the pump that looks like the pump up there? This is some sort of regulator. Is it? I Die a solenoid. Allow the fluid in or whatnot.
So and I assume that's the pump up there and it goes out somewhere else. We'll follow the money there in a minute. Dig Messer Brand I'm sure I Guess ya know it well use them all the time. I've got a bunch of my parts been.

Um, yeah. so there you go. knock yourself out. Is it some sort of sensor? Well, hang on.

I think it actually comes apart? Whoa. Yep. Liquid assume it's just water. There you go.

Yeah, no, it's a yeah, it's a sensor. So I assumed that yeah, that's a flow sensor. There you go. little o-ring on there.

so that's just measuring the flow out of their thing. so they'll just be a little Hall effect sensor and it just gets the flow. That's nice. Good thing is that you can open that for cleaning.

I Really like that. See that could be useful. You know if you're into all this sort of you know, fluid type stuff I Don't know. All right.

David Who is a coffee aficionado? He's gonna give us the rundown. All right. I Feel like a big interview? This is quality mic in here. Yeah, Alright so this is milk or water.

If it has an inlet, did you see an inlet for water? it may plug into the wall. Oh okay, no okay, this could mean your core water and there's gonna be a boiler in here somewhere or some kind of pump. The boiler generally builds up pressure which is what's used come out of this steam nozzle, right? I'll call the frother, but it's not only for that. So there are lots of different types of pumps in these things.

so there are lots of different ways these machines work. One of them is with a thermo block and that's probably what this is and the other ways. Um, a thermal block is just like a heating element with a pump. and there's also like boiler systems which basically the that pressure in the form of steam and they use that pressure to pump the the coffee and they also use it to shoot through the steam nozzle.

So I Expect we'd see a real tanky heating element in a nice pump in here where you a barista at one stage. No. I do have a barista qualification just because I like coffee, but you know I don't Usually this type of machine is very different to the ones that I would use notice. So there I presume this is a real janky plastic ripoff thing you'd use like a nice stainless steel made in Italy one wouldn't you or something.

Well, these fully automated ones, they're actually kind of expensive. There's there's these semi automated ones, fully automated nerves and then the full manual ones. But these ones they lack whole Bunkley whole sets of features like they don't have. You can't tamp the coffee beans into the I forgot what's called thing that you do that which you know you don't really have much choice about the type of coffee you're getting out of.

these ones, Don't think so. It's just four different coffee sizes. Fully automated ones for I Guess if you've got a dummy work in there, you want to fully automate a one who forgot someone who knows what they're doing right? Yeah, it's really just for flexibility. They're the fully automated ones.
Usually aren't as refined. Yeah, are you doing yeah, yeah, it's a complete yeah. You get that burnt taste every time. And generally people like, like people don't realize the beans are in the meant to be kept for like two months or something, right? They don't keep very like the really nice ones they don't keep very well and these ones they typically have a minute for a year like a normal I Don't know about this hand thing I Don't know I've never had a fully automated machine, but no more once you go through a bag every like month or two.

- yeah I thought it was like you'd like you use like a quarter of a bag per coffee or something. I don't know, no no no I mean only use I always I could remember the grams but I haven't done this for a while so I'm probably getting some things wrong. vaguely wrong, right? But but yeah, it's only a few grams. like like it's this small little capsule about no though.

they because people drink a lot of coffee. yeah, but coffee beans on it aren't cheap, they're They're actually reasonably expensive, but they go a long ways. But I'll say like I don't know what the margins are, but god they're 50. If you pay, you can pay 50 to 100 bucks for a bag this big.

Wow like if you if you're being a bit opulent like you could, yeah, we may call on you later. Well that definitely looks like it had water in it and not milk. So yeah, right. what were they skimping out? I Don't know.

for you pump aficionados, There you go. 70 watts. Jeez, that's more than I would have thought for just pumping a bit of water. And check out that rubber baby buggy bumper compliant mount there.

That's really, that's really very nice. and you know, so like it goes like it's not rigidly mounted down here or anything. so that's that's. pretty sweet.

This is actually pretty well made, huh? Quite impress so far. there's other attention to detail in here. Check out just this bit of plastic here that they've got. Just got it.

like shielding. not electrically shielding, but physically shielding the transformer. just so that all these wires, presumably so that all these wires and tubing don't sort of. you know, touch or rub against the middle of the transformer.

So that's that's that's pretty sweet. And then they've cable tied at all and kept it all in in place. if there's really. I paid attention to detail here.

Base of those nozzles there for those who care. Now we're getting somewhere. I think I can get this front panel off now. right off it comes.

if they have hot snot at it, that's not nice. Well done. It looks like there's nothing else. They've just got the the front where that the nozzle things which go in the coffee cup that just looks like it mates up with this rubber baby buggy bumper over here and that comes from this looks like and that comes from this outlet.
I presume it just goes right angle like that and that comes out from here. which comes from the Mekinese, this hopper mechanism that crushed all that. I think I've got that upside down? How? abou? Yep, there you go. So it comes out.

they're not there. Sorry, there you go. It comes out the bottom here. looks like we've got some Filter Ii thing happening there and the beans came down here, crushed and they go through.

I Got no idea what this thing here does I don't know. there's another nozzle up near the top here which goes up in there I don't know, it's too convoluted. I my brains exploding. Anyway, all I know is that there's really no sensors or anything inside this thing.

It's really, it's really, you know, almost entirely mechanical. I haven't really seen any sensors yet as such, apart from you know, measuring that water float. So this is our water pump. Comes out here like this.

it's all cable. Try it in place very nicely and it buggers off into the internals in here which we haven't gotten to yet. I'm even impressed with like interfaces like this which goes out to the throttle thing. whatever it is, look at that.

I mean you know they've gone to a lot of effort to sort of, you know, engineer that interface. Nice. Aha, this is all gonna come off. We check it out.

There's our grinder, some sort of geared mechanism I'm sure it wouldn't turn very fast. some sort of reduction gear. look, you know once again I don't know what I'm talking about. so that is a that is compliant mount.

Go. a bit of wiggle, wiggle wiggle. Yeah there. So yeah.

done welter. You know a D-cup or vibrations and stuff in this thing? Yeah, there it is. You can see the rubber mounts down there. Sweet.

Oh coffee's falling out. Ah Tada. There we go. There's a grinder.

got ourselves a probably a decent motor there. I Don't know anyone there you go for those playing along at home. twelve thousand, three hundred rpm. So here's our outlet here.

This goes into this what looks like a solenoid so that controls whether or not it flows on the output. and then the water comes out of here and this is looks like a dual stage heating block. Yeah, water comes in here and then we've got another channel here which comes from this hose that we saw before. So this comes from our water.

So this is our water. and I don't know. Is it milk or whatever? Inlet So it looks like it's got two inlets here and here. and here's where it and looks like there's some sort of sensor down in there that that would be the heating element there and there.

There you go. Yep, you can see the big copper, big copper heating elements going into that thing. So there. Yeah, so they're woven through the block so that's what you see all these you know, it's just like any you know, element based system in a block.
Like some, you know it's just yeah, it's a heater block. So that's a dual stage heater block. I'm not sure you know Joule was better, right? Twice as good. But yeah, that's all it does is taste.

These two inputs here don't know how it mixes them, but it takes a the two inputs and then just heats it up and out comes your coffee. There to be some timing basis that they would just mix them together and it comes out as probably you know they sometime in thing related to make a good coffee to mix your you know you heat up the coffee watery thing first and then you add the milk after a certain amount of time etc etc. I Don't know if you know the details, post it down below. Check that out.

They've actually gone to a lot of trouble that was very like bolted into here. and yeah, sure it's bolted into the plastic but like you know it's it's really quite a lot of work to go do just that. That's the output solenoid that you know and that's big beefy mains wires going in there. It's a 230 volt insulation class - and it just turns it off and on.

That's it. Just stops the flow of your coffee yarn out. It could regulate the flow - I Don't know if anyone knows the details of that puppy. Hmm, so yeah.

David tells me that you can actually have different pressures of your coffee coming out. Well I did like different flow rates and oh yeah, there you go. Wow Okay, that's interesting. So is that just a big-ass coil? And then there's something physical happening inside that maybe you know it may be the amount of magnetic field you put into their controls.

The flow? Perhaps I would assume that's how that thing works, is totally unbranded. That'll kind of make sense. and you know. And I assume it's like normally off because you wouldn't want to apply power to this thing all the time just to stop it flowing out.

So I assume it's like normally off, and then it just regulates it on when it needs to. So yeah, it probably requires a quite a bit of power to do that. but that's interesting. And right down in there you can see a thermocouple.

There it is. and they've got one. So there's a thermocouple on this heating block. and there's also a thermocouple down there on this heating block as well.

Right down there. Yeah, my roll heater blocks. no one will presumably made in China It's got some Chinese in there. Yeah, But there you go.

Looks like it. That's a yeah thermal cutout. It's there, just like standard things and all sorts of. I Use one on my solar air heater when it gets to a certain temperature.

They're just a physical element inside there that just closes or opens the contacts when it reaches a certain temperature. So that's usually like gross overload. Well though, you can use them for thermal regulation as well. But really yeah, they've got another one on that block over there.
So this is your output heater block. here. This is. this.

goes off to your frother and so this is your output heater block. and then it comes from this side here. So it looks like it feeds some into here. Like it comes in here and goes into this heater block and comes out here and also feeds part of it over to your outputs.

Oh man. Look I Don't know. Like give me a block diagram of operation. So there you go.

There's our heater blocks. You can see how the element comes through here. Got a big ass? Spade Like on there, it just goes through like that. it's just one big resistive element.

Same on the backside. There, there's your thermocouple sensor tied down to the block. That's rather nice that's actually tied into the block itself, goes inside, not actually on the heater. So that's what you want to do to make sure that you're actually sensing the thing that you're trying to heat up rather than your element.

and it looks like under here they look like some sort of thermal thermal fuse are they? So that's interesting. We're going to have thermal and mechanical thermal cut out here and these are in series. their inner tube. so it's not like that.

they're you know, directly sensing. so they've got a 2 in series with that. She's this serious about their thermal cutout? that's just yeah. it's just remarkable the effort they've gone to that.

Wow Feel free to identify that 10 amp, 172 degrees. There you go. So The thermal fuse? like is it a one-off thing? So if it gets over 172 degrees celsius, it'll um, it'll blow. presumably Sf1 6 9 e Yep, that's a limit or brand.

I've never heard them before, but yeah, I'm sure they're the Ducks guts in a non resettable thermal fuses. So they've actually put like two of them on this block. which is really interesting. Like just in case one side of the block gets hot than the other first.

I Have got a lot of effort. Three protection devices. Of course, these are resettable. These are non resettable.

So Wow they even went to the effort to put the thermal compound on there nice. and then in here we have what I'll probably call the hopper motor because it drives this thing here. So there you go that mates up to that down there and it does whatever that thing does. Yeah, I guess it selects how well it grinds the UH how well it runs the coffee.

Anyway, that's that's a big block, isn't it? Wow And they've got that mains earthed as well. just easier to cut those. Jeez. I Like the insulation on that.

Well, that insulation is like it's like a rubber. Sorry, this isn't. feel it. Oh, look there you go.

look at that. Wow If anyone knows the name for that type of insulation, I've seen it I've probably seen it before, but jeez, it's a form of woven insulation. But it feels it feels like very rubbery rather than, you know, like cotton II or anything like that. But yeah, certainly a woven wrap with maybe an inner rubber core or something.
Neat. Okay, so we have a motor inside there you can see that was dry. So this is just going to be one big gear reduction thing. I'm gonna limit.

Well, a activation switch which tells you that you've plugged in that hopper thingy mechanism correctly and then it looks like it just it controls a another pump E2b thing up there. Oops. I Just realized I still have my macro lens on for that. Um, anyway, let's lift this and hello, yeah, there's our reduction gear and reduction thing.

I'm about. yeah, you can see how I don't know. count the number of turns that it requires to what the reduction ratio is and looks like it just alternates. Um, some limit switches up here.

So I guess it that probably controls the direction of the hopper or something like that. Maybe it goes back and forth or something like that. So that's a mechanical solution? Perhaps because you already got to drive the motor anyway? I guess but that's maybe some sort of no orders that is simply reverse the motor. Does it just go me like I don't know.

And the pic microchip for em boys go wild. There you go. What is that? An 18 F40? 620? Yeah. Big 40 pin dip package.

Thank you very much and discuss some 7 4 Series Logic is very like old-school through-hole I Really like it. And of course there's a very nice bunch of optocouplers down here with the nice isolation slots down between them and they've all silkscreen designated or the main section of that. It's all very nice and isolation slots between each of the pins of the bridge rectifier. Brilliant stuff, so that's all.

There's actually two fuses on there and these are just flapping around in the breeze and not a fan of that. I would say it's a staggered leg arrangement there, so it has better stability than just the horizontal one there. and got a couple of switching trainees on the heatsink, their coffee and steam or stem. There you go.

So they're like the main side going out to the the coffee heater and the steam heaters presumably. and the rest of it's all just you know, or just digitally digital control. This just goes off to the front panel which has like an LCD and other miscellaneous stuff on it. So this you know, there's not really much in there at all and they call it the core motor and corty see out the grinder motor here.

Meg net, what's magnet, pump and work TC in there the internal names that they give these things. So, but apart from that seminal groundwork TC Out big-ass relay on there and that's a decent layout? don't mind that at all. So what parts can you salvage out of? There's something like this? Well, of course you got the motor up here. You might want to reuse the grinder mechanism for something who knows.
These boards are very nice to keep because you know you've got like large mains, filter caps, big common mode chokes you've got like beach band big ass bridge rectifiers, you've got varistors, you've got a relay on there, the optocouplers, you can salvage those very nice little you know, heat sinks and other stuff you can get off there. so you know boards like that are well worth It's well worth having a just a junk box full of like scrap boards and things like that. Very handy. You know you get little transformers.

We've got the thermal fuses, the thermal cutouts, and stuff like that. We've got the Big ass, the pump, the water pump up there, and things like that. so you know there's a few neat little things you can salvage out of this. Well, there you go.

Everyone had better damn well of liked that video because my lab now smells like bloody coffee. So I think it's a mandatory thumbs up for me making the sacrifice to do that. And as always you can discuss it down below. and if you've got more details on how these coffees things work by all means, Yeah, as I said, leave it down below and as always you can support me on Patreon.

Although I have lost quite a few our patrons recently with the complete debacle that is the Sargon thing, Patreon keep doing this sort of crap and people keep leaving Patreon I Can't necessarily blame them, but I'm still on there and I'm still, you know. Thank you very much to my patrons who often get to see the videos early and stuff and you can support me otherwise. Paypal donations. I've got a donate page on the website always linked in down below: Sep, Crypto and all that sort of stuff.

or buy some of the merch. I'm floggin. Catch you next time.

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By YTB

24 thoughts on “Eevblog #1161- automated coffee machine dumpster teardown”
  1. Avataaar/Circle Created with python_avatars Robert B says:

    perfect. fine fresh roasted coffee is a scarce commodity. more for me thank you all very much ๐Ÿ™‚

  2. Avataaar/Circle Created with python_avatars DrStorm says:

    I'm shocked. He looks like the most caffeinated person ever. ๐Ÿ˜€

  3. Avataaar/Circle Created with python_avatars Syuriously says:

    Some days there are more coffee machines out on the curb than bins on the curb in the Inner West. I had a friend that flipped a few coffee machines from a second hand unit $150 to a nice stainless steel $2000 unit on Gumtree in Sydney.

  4. Avataaar/Circle Created with python_avatars ali says:

    Hello can you tell me where to download the firmware

  5. Avataaar/Circle Created with python_avatars Lvx Leather says:

    Classic Dave ๐Ÿคฃ

  6. Avataaar/Circle Created with python_avatars Mik says:

    8 to 10 grams of ground beans for a cup depending on the beans, taste and how course the grind is. "It's all in the grind".

  7. Avataaar/Circle Created with python_avatars Ennar says:

    I finally got myself a machine like this, and this one is in horrible condition. It's supposed to be clean in there. It does seem quite well-made for a household appliance.

  8. Avataaar/Circle Created with python_avatars Paul Glick says:

    You're like an alien that came to earth and discovered a small "space ship" for earthlings.

  9. Avataaar/Circle Created with python_avatars Oscar says:

    I just woke up, there is first snow outside, it is beautiful, now I want my bloody coffee.

  10. Avataaar/Circle Created with python_avatars Gabriel Villasenor says:

    Varistor barista

  11. Avataaar/Circle Created with python_avatars Mark W says:

    As an EE student, I never expected working at Starbucks would equip me to know more than Dave in one of these videos

  12. Avataaar/Circle Created with python_avatars Hola! Ed Axeman says:

    Don't play dumb!!๐Ÿคฆโ€โ™‚๏ธ

  13. Avataaar/Circle Created with python_avatars Dark Angel says:

    Is that insulation not just canvas?

  14. Avataaar/Circle Created with python_avatars Slartibartfas042 says:

    What on earth can be "convoluted" in an ordinary coffee automate? Where Coffee comes out of the brewing group there must get hot water in – so you have water inlet and coffee outlet. As easy as that…. OMG!

  15. Avataaar/Circle Created with python_avatars Justin Thomas says:

    Coffee is disgusting, just saying

  16. Avataaar/Circle Created with python_avatars Mark Hodgson says:

    Haha so funny ,you can feel the hate you have for this ,good on ya dave

  17. Avataaar/Circle Created with python_avatars Moclan5 says:

    Of course the water is only used for the steam. The wafter for the coffee is already in the beans.

  18. Avataaar/Circle Created with python_avatars Nick Cowan says:

    Domestic coffee repair technician of 7 years. Cringing the whole way through. No comprehension of parts naming, function or operation. May as well have been a 5 year old in a backward.
    Coffee guy was less than helpful, and mostly wrong. Can't finish.

  19. Avataaar/Circle Created with python_avatars Dunc Keroo says:

    Silicone rubber 200 degree C wire, nickle plated conductors. Heater elements are useful as load test resistors.

  20. Avataaar/Circle Created with python_avatars Wizzard says:

    Coffee coffee

  21. Avataaar/Circle Created with python_avatars Pete The NEET says:

    Ya need a little cheese ta go with that wine???
    If you didn't want to do this, you soulda left it in the dumpster…

  22. Avataaar/Circle Created with python_avatars Radio Engineering says:

    You know it's made in china when you find the hot snot > : D

  23. Avataaar/Circle Created with python_avatars m76sports says:

    I can understand not drinking coffe. But not knowing that you need water to make it? WTF? I mean, really WTF?

  24. Avataaar/Circle Created with python_avatars Khaos Cero says:

    We shall form the rebellion against the coffee drinkers. We will be few but we shall resist the vile liquid.

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