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(Amy Lynn Young-Leith) wrote in message >...
> Hey coffee fiends, I need your help! This should be fun.
>
> I'm working on a project (for a course in design) where the task is to
> design an intelligent coffee machine of the future.

Hmm, it rather depends upon where the intelligence lives - in the
machine or in the designer :-)

OK, I have been thinking about some ideas for a while, and put these
forward as pretty much exactly what I would like to see on the market.
Unless someone is going to be kind enough to send me the numbers for
Saturday night's lottery draw I suspect I am going to have to wait for
someone else to engineer this and put it into production.

Clearly it is going to have to brew the best possible coffee. That
goes without saying. So...

It will boast very high precision in temperature profile and either
pressure or volume profile. This is achievable now - one way to
create what I envisage would be a pair of leadscrew driven pumps - one
driving hot water, the other cold - a computer controlled feed-forward
system would be able to create perfect profiles of all the brew
parameters.

OK, now some more mundane thoughts.

My big beef about all domestic machines is that they are considered a
standalone device. Make it a kitchen bench appliance - drill a huge
hole in the bench-top and mount it over its own dedicated sink. You
can put most of the mechanism under the bench-top - yielding almost
arbitrary flexibility on the aesthetics of the visible component, and
it suddenly becomes a very kitchen friendly device. The mess goes
straight down the sink.

The machine can pay for its use of bench-space by being multi-purpose.
The hot water delivery is a real boon, and we could add a additional
nozzles for filtered water, both room temperature and chilled. Many
people already have special hot and cold water delivery systems in
their kitchen, this would supersede them (and also justify part of
the price.)

Cleaning. We have a computer controlled machine with a source of high
pressure hot water and steam. There is no reason why is cannot keep
itself perfectly clean. Additional nozzles in strategic places and a
"clean me" button. The machine simply blasts itself with hot water
and steam, it would be possible to make a self cleaning steam want too
(perhaps using a double walled wand to deliver the cleaning water to
the end.) Since the machine is mounted over a sink there is no issue
about where the mess goes.

External body. It should be constructed like any other piece of high
quality plumbing for long term use in a domestic situation. Solid
polished metal. All the switch-gear should be flush with the surface
and totally sealed - so it is possible to clean all external surfaces
with ordinary kitchen cleaning materials in exactly the same way as
you would keep a tap or sink clean.

Grinder. This is an interesting issue. Clearly we will want a
grinder. One possibility is to integrate a grinder into the machine.
In a domestic low volume setting we don't need a clone of a commercial
unit (except in durability and quality.) We don't want a doser, nor a
large hopper. Indeed a true coffee geek will want to individually
grind different beans from shot to shot - so we only need a hopper
large enough to hold that - and add a weighted lid that will drive all
the beans through the grinder and avoid any flying out. Use a conical
burr grinder so that the grinds fall straight out of the bottom, and
use a 90 degree gear set so that the motor can be mounted out of the
way - deep inside the machine. The grinder can eject grinds right
next to the group head, so it is very convenient - and any mess drops
into the sink.

Cutsie ideas.
Put a peltier cell cooled plate somewhere so that the milk jug can be
kept cold for the best milk steaming performance. Adjustable cup
holder so for those that must, a large cup or mug can be placed under
the portafilter. This holder should also rotate out of the way to
provide full access to the sink.

Clearly the device will be engineered to stay on permanently.
Internally it should be very well insulated and the outside shell
should not get hot. One could utilise aerogel insulation and achieve
astounding thermal performance.

So, anyone want to make me one?