It’a detained by magnets so it doesn’t get in the basket and interfere with spreading out the grounds. Needs a clean up with a lick of sandpaper, pretty stupid but these things cost like 50 bucks /shrug
EDIT: appreciate all the concern for my health, it touches dry coffee grounds. I agree that if it got wet there’d be health problems but unless it gets real humid there’s just no opportunity for decay. As for random leaching same diff, without heat and wet it’s not really a concern.
That said I probably will seal an improved design, this is just a test piece.
Please keep in mind that you need to seal that print before you use it with food. Because of the layers, there’s are a ton of places for dirt and bacteria to hide that are impossible to clean. Additionally, depending on what kind of nozzle you used, heavy metals can end up in your print which you don’t want to then leech into your coffee. General advice is to just not use 3d prints first good, but if you really want to you should coat them in a food safe epoxy before using.
This is good advice.
On the bright side for OP, his part should (hopefully) only come into contact with dry coffee grounds so some of those concerns are lessened.
In other applications – sealant or not – I can only imagine pouring hot coffee over a PLA part would not be a recipe for success…
I don’t imagine the microplastics are great either tbh.
Honestly, instead of all that, the general rule should be don’t use 3d printed stuff with food, period. Cause everyones focused on what can leech into the plastic and cause nastiness, but no one focuses about what could leech out of the plastic. Especially in this era where every month theres some new recall of some product that has something terrible in it that shouldnt be there.
and even if you do manage to find and buy a filament that claims its food safe/food grade, your printer is not. The materials used in 3d printers are not food safe, the lubricants and greases are not food safe, the previous filaments that you’ve printed with and have left buildup isnt food safe, and theres probably a lot in the average printers hot end that is not food safe… Not to mention the bed, and any adhesives you might use.
Its just not worth the risk to yourself or potential loved ones, So don’t even try it in all honesty.
3d printers are great, fantastic even. Mines saved a lot of money by letting me design and build replacement parts and tools to do obscure jobs specific to the situation, and even some pretty nice gifts and other stuff. Its great at a lot of things.
but it will never be good for anything to do with human consumption. Don’t let 3d printed materials touch your food, drinks, or be involved in prep areas.
Microplastic speed run
He could just run a flame on it to melt whispy plastic strands down
Do you really thing that coffee grounds brushing up on something sheds significant amounts compared to like all the plastic you touch and then eat after not washing your hands? Or the Teflon in the rain on our crops? or storing food in plastic containers particularly during heating or freezing?
I’d be more concerned about takeway coming in shitty plastic containers that stain (indicating mixing on a molecular level) than coffee grounds touching a piece of PLA.
Yes, absolutely. Coffee grounds rubbing up against rough 3d printed plastic is going to act like little grinders pulling off bits of of plastic directly into the grounds.
Not to say that we all haven’t already lost the microplastics speed run. I am concerned about the things you listed, but yeah, I wouldn’t want anything 3d prone to be so close to so many small hard moving pieces of food.
3d printed plastic isn’t much worse than other plastic. The grinds aren’t under any force.
Have a look at a printed part under SEM and you’ll see it’s quite smooth and cohesive. Coffee grounds are light and fluffy, they don’t grind plastic.
I think you’re not basing this on any scientific investigation.
To each their own I suppose
3D printed parts are NOT food safe.
In general, yes. But the contact here is minimal. I wouldn’t be worried.
So usually id agree that 3d prints shouldn’t be used for food, but this is a coffee hopper, they’re made from plastic already and I guarantee you the ones we used at Starbucks didn’t get that clean either, it’s fine, just sand it and get rid of those hairs
3d printing vs injection molding is a huge difference, so it’s not fair to say “they are both made of plastic”.
It’s also not taking a huge amount of friction either, it’s literally just a hopper, walls to gravity feed the shelled beans into the grinder, sometimes it’s okay to step away from the rules a bit and just go, that’ll be fine
“rules” are there for a reason. But hey, it’s your health and safety, do whatever you want.
Yes but common sense is also there for a reason, I would absolutely trust this material to handle very light duty tasks like this. There is a difference between following rules within the boundaries of common sense and spouting them off in any tangentially related scenario without having done any testing yourself or even seeing the product in action. There is simply no way to definitively say “this is a bad idea” without doing microbe tests and comparing it to baseline levels after a period. I think people tend to jump on the not food safe bandwagon a little too readily in this community and I’d rather not see this place become like an average reddit hobby ground
I’d quadruple upvote this if I could.
Or - and this seems to have escaped your analysis - in this case we’re talking about health and safety rules and rules dealing with food preparation. Not exactly the kind of rules you want to be gambling with. But sure. It’s a feee world, do what you want. But I still wouldn’t want to be using this with my coffee.
And you’re free not to, just don’t bash others for choosing to do so
Yeah there is a way to say “this is a bad idea” without microbes tests. This is a bad idea, plain and simple. Just because you want to say otherwise, doesn’t mean you are right. It’s simply not food safe.
Oh you’re being a wowser.
So food safe is a phrase averaging a series of concepts. I agree it is tremendously unwise to say eat soup repeatedly out of a 3d printed bowl because of inability to clean it properly and leaching of contaminates.
It’s probably not very dangerous to eat peanuts once out of a 3d printed bowl because there’s no liquid to leech shit through and you’re not relying on washing it.
you need to think about the underlying mechanisms of things. If you don’t know anything then abundant caution is wise, but you should probably couple it with humility.
Leeching through solids is the only real concern here and I probably get orders of magnitude more heavy metals from my tap water (which are still safe limits) or VOCs from the plastic decaying slowly in the soil that grows my veggies (all soil on earth is contaminated at this point, but I grow next to farmers and lemme tell ya nobody hates the environment like farmers).
I know way more than you realize. As I said before - you do you. It won’t be me who ends up drinking plastic.
Chill out about your microbes already. The world is full of them and other micro-organisms that don’t harm you.
Yeah you need moisture for decay. Tiny fines might eventually go rancid in tiny pores and taste or smell a little bad but idk. She’ll be right.
Like it’s not like I clean the burrs that grind the beans much so if rotting was a problem I’d be dead already.
I use some supposedly food grade filament with a stainless nozzle and dedicated extruder, and after initial finishing they get a dip in food grade epoxy. I only made star wars and penis shaped cookie cutters though.
I’ve been meaning to make one that molds to my grinder to prevent grinds flying all over the counter.
Just FYI, you can find metal dosing rings with magnets for as low as $3 on AliExpress. I’m sure yours fits better though!
Huh, didn’t consider aliexpress. I have an old lever machine with a non standard basket size (49 mm or something) so idk if they exist for it. I can see one with a brief search, but it protrudes down into the basket to locate itself which is a bit inelegant.
I know it’s probably sacrilege, but I avoid the need for one of these by grinding half a dose, tamping a bit then grinding the rest and finishing the tamp. I’m using a Breville Barista Express so couldn’t (easily) use one of these even if I wanted to.
I’m curious how you retain the magnets in it? Are they printed in, or mechanically added later? (I know very little about 3d printing, this just came up in my top-6-hour feed)
I haven’t done much with magnets, but I saw one model where you pause the print halfway through, drop magnets into the holes, then continue the print and they get sealed in Amontillado-style.
Pop the magnets into the paused print.
The magnets: "Hahaha. This is a fine joke, good sir!’
Resume print
Magnets: “Yes, a very funny joke indeed. Wait, sir, where are you going! Sir! SIR!!”
Walk away knowing that neither you nor anyone else will see those magnets again
Oh God imagine being 3d printed alive into your casket
Worst part is it taking forever for it to print the casket around you, and you’re just lying there unable to do shit and just watch the casket close around you in ultra slow-mo. Like being buried alive with a tea-spoon for a shovel.
I’m not really a coffee wanker so I don’t know one way or the other what tamping halfway would do. I just want to be able to dump the grounds in, shake, and tamp.
The magnets are just push fit into little holes in the bottom. I just tap them in with blunt nail and a hammer.
coffee wanker
Lol wut
Oh you know how coffee people are.
You 3D printed a dosing funnel.
I refuse to call it that! My machine takes a charge thankyouverymuch. I dose heroin to cope with my self loathing.
Jokes aside it just makes stuff cleaner. You’ll be horrified to know I don’t usually bother with a needle tool, I think French press and moka pot are actually pretty nice (honestly a giant fan of French press), cold brew is delicious but I absolutely cannot be fucked with waiting hours for my coffee, and if people like milk and sugar it’s fine although I do think we could all benefit from eating less sugar as I think acclimatising yourself to sweetness mutes normal flavours in food.
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Super cool! Great job. You can eliminate that seam by changing the position to random in Cura.
You can find dosing funnels for ~$12 on Amazon. Still overpriced but eclipsed by the investment you made in the espresso machine.
I have a non standard old timey portafilter.
Pet peeve, a coffee machine isn’t an investment. Not in the literal sense and the creepy corporatisation of language is weird. It’s just an expensive toy that makes me like life a little more :) I actually got an old europiccola because no electronics (bimetal strip and heating coil aside) means I can keep this thing working indefinitely.
A lighter will tidy up the stringing without making the mess that sandpaper will. Just don’t linger too long or the part will warp. It should take less than a second to make the strings disappear with a lighter.
Hot a air station, if you have one, will also do wonders here. I suspect an adjustable hot air gun would also probably work, but those things can put out some serious heat so be careful.
I actually use a Lexivon torch, and move quickly. Lots of heat in a precise location for a short amount of time.
Hey, that’s neat! I use a scrap piece from a previous employer. It’s a 2inch tall stainless steel combiner ring. Definitely not as cool as yours and definitely not light enough for magnetic holds. You win lol
Yeah but yours isn’t made of plastic so I think we can both find things to be pleased about.
Thanks for the kind words!
Oh, for sure! It is annoying having to hold it as I work with it. But, I don’t have a 3D printer, so I did what I could with the tools at my disposal. I am happy with it :)
If it’s at all magnetic (I know some stainless isn’t) then you could probably just slap a neodidlium magnet on either side to hold it. Or you could make something to locate the phlangey things on the portafilter and attach them to the outside of the ring? Could even be as simple as 4 nails with the tips ground off?
I have neodymium magnets from another project. I should do that. They’re about 2cm in diameter, but I can probably cut them to size.
I am by no means sure of this, but wouldn’t cutting them throw off the magnetic alignment?
No. The magnetism comes from macroscopic ordering of microscopic features.
Basically you know how if you strap magnets together you get big magnet? small magnet is smaller magnets strapped together.
Magnets are very fragile though and cutting them is hard.
I’ve broken several of them, and they kept their magnetism. Neodymium magnets are like friggin glass in their fragility, though.
How does it do with fine grounds and static? IIRC one of the reasons for magnets is to fight static cling from the finer bits.
A dash of water on the beans before grinding eliminates the static buildup
Pretty cool
Heads up, make sure you use food safe filament for this. And I would still be rather wary of excessive micro plastics in my morning brew
