Designing the Coffee Grinder

Coffee grinders have been around for centuries. Only recently have electric coffee grinders been introduced. Even more recently have personal coffee grinders been mass produced for households. The reason for personal coffee grinders is the fact that society has advanced past the point of only having what is necessary for survival and into luxury. Purchasing coffee beans and grinding them is a much cheaper way to get coffee than buying the coffee beans pre-grinded. 

Customers wanted an easy way to grind their coffee that didn’t take a while and wasn’t very big. Thus, the electric coffee grinder was invented. People rejoiced! Finally able to purchase a cheap coffee grinder people were able to make their coffee happily.The electric bill for grinding your coffee beams is so small that you wouldn’t even notice. The price of the coffee beans varies based on where you buy it from, but it averages a couple dollars per grinding. This makes 3 to 4 cups of coffee. There is an easily removable top grinder and a crank on the side for manual grinding. This only slightly changes the design of the product and doesn’t really add to the cost of the product. Right now the coffee grinder is listed at $24.99, showing that society views coffee as an important part of life.

- Justin Brauckman

Lifecycle of a coffee grinder

The coffee grinder is made up mostly of plastic, with the exception of the actual grinder (as recreated in the science post), the motor, and the wiring. The casing and much of the other components like the gears and teeth are plastic. The fact that the machine is made mostly of plastic is both a good and bad thing. Plastic can be an amazing resource because once the machine has reached the end of its life cycle the plastic can be melted down and reused in virtually anything. Plastic can also be bad for the environment, because it practically never decays so dumps and trash made up of plastic will never be returned back to the earth. I could not get the exact manufacturing process online, but from what I can tell the plastic pieces are formed from the injection molding process, made from a machine like this one.

This process lets companies manufacture many complicated parts very fast and the same way each time. Obviously with any industrial machine, it is not the best for the environment. The heaters and multiple moving parts on the injection molding machine require a good amount of energy, and can be a drain on the environment. The coffee grinder itself also needs to use energy, albeit a much smaller quantity.

I think that it would be much better for the environment if a person used a hand-operated coffee grinder, because it is not that hard to turn and would use much less electricity. There are many hand operated coffee grinders out there, plus the person gets the satisfaction of grinding coffee by hand.

-Ben Hammond

The Daily Grind 日本

Product Redesign

            When we began research into the usage of this product in Japan we discovered a developing fad. As in America, Japan has a growing culture of speed and convenience that has led to a new development in the coffee industry, canned coffee. In much the same way that the soda industry moved from inconvenient glass bottles, to aluminum cans, coffee has made a transition from morning machine to commuting can. The cans have been rocketed into further fame by a series of successful commercial campaigns by Boss Coffee featuring Tommy Lee Jones as Alien Jones. Click here to view a medley of these commercials. These cans, complete with brewed coffee, premixed with cream and sugar and assorted flavorings, are a product of the machine age, but there is some trade off in the flavor department. In exchange for ease, you lose the smell of freshly ground coffee, the warmth of a morning cup, and the freshness that simply cannot be found in a can. In order to maintain the immeasurable value of flavor, while preserving the look, feel, pleasure and ease of canned coffee, we designed The Daily Grind, a one-button all in one machine that not only grinds coffee, but brews it and mixes it with cream, sugar and flavoring, all while depositing it in a specially designed receptacle aesthetically resembling an aluminum can, maintaining that canned coffee feel. The machine, made from stainless steel to further the metallic theme, comes with cartridges containing cream and sugar, and so one can simply insert their favorite bean in the top receptacle, place a cartridge in its holder and push the single button on the front. This makes a 12 oz. “can” of freshly brewed coffee with no excessive effort. The final benefit is a significant drop in the environmental impact of aluminum can usage, as well as a significant reduction of the cost of a cup of coffee, as a single can runs between 2-3 US dollars. Below is a schematic rendering of the product.

Science of the Coffee Grinder

Science was used in the design of the grinders. Torque is used to grind and crush the beans. The assumption of this model include the black circles as the grinder, the white squares as the ridges/grinding teeth, and the paper clips are just there to hold the ridges in place on the model. The model is very close to the functionality of the grinder.

Manufacturing of the Coffee Grinder

The coffee grinder is made from injection molding for the plastic, and casting for the metal parts. The motor is then assembled with the housing surrounding it. The plastic parts are assembled and the motor is installed in the plastic housing. The grinder is also installed at this time. The plastic housing, screws, and parts of the motor can be recycled, reused, or remanufactured based on their condition. The coffee grinder can be manufactured to a higher quality with better plastic or by using a housing made out of another material, such as stainless steel. The design of the grinder can also cut down on the amount of empty space in the coffee grinder, making the design more compact. The coffee grinder is not made to a higher quality because the product is catered to middle class people who don’t want to spend lots of money on a coffee grinder. The environmental impact would come from the plastic production with the residual chemicals, chemical additives and degradation products in the plastic products that can leach out as they are not bound to the plastic polymer. The burning of heat needed to mold the plastic and the metal can cause the release of carbon into the atmosphere, contributing to greenhouse gases.The costs would include the energy required to mold the plastic and metal (1 to 5 megajoules). There is also the energy used by machines to assemble things like the motor.