Variable Flow rate for vibe pumps

Coughy

Here's a description of my project to control the flow rate on my Rancilio Miss Silvia machine. It would work with pretty much any vibe pump machine.

https://sites.google.com/site/silviabrewprofiler/

Brett H

Holy wow and welcome! Can we see a shot??  More videos??  This is brilliant mate!  Welcome BTW!

Dry_bean.

Morning Coughy, welcome to The Coffee Forum. Quite a little project you took on there, I'm very impressed. Your obviously involved with electronics?

Lacehim

That is one seriously modded Silvia!  8) Nice website.  I'm with Brett, you need a nice video of a pour there to show the final product. Can you tell us more about what it has done for your coffee?

Coughy

Thanks for the nice words! I'd have to say I'm more of an electronics geek than a coffee gourmet, so the thrill of the project was the driver. Being able to slow the pump delivery rate has made a difference though. I'm finding milder flavours and a more interesting shot. There's a lot of freedom in being able to grind the beans a bit more coarsely and then adjust the flow profile without having to get out a spanner, take the top off the machine and tinker with the OPV. Points out the nature of a hobby too; an electronics engineer designing and building a circuit like this and then writing the code would expect to be paid maybe $100 an hour. The 100 hours this took me would then have cost $10k which would keep me in shots from my local for the rest of my life! When it's your hobby there's no such thing as economics.

Brett H

Brilliant mate and I agree that you can't think economic rationality in regards to hobbies.  The joy they bring is priceless! Take for example the joy you've given all of us.