A better silky silicone steam wand sleeve
The steam wand on the Decent Espresso Machine uses a length of food-grade silicone tubing, to indicate the safe place where you can grab the steam wand to move it.
Most of the time, you can actually grab the wand anywhere, as it's a “cool touch” wand, with an inner teflon tube, to keep the outer metal cool. However, with enough use, the hot milk will heat that metal up. Also, psychologically, it's nice to have a “this area is safe” visual indication on a potentially hot object.
Most other espresso machines use a moulded piece. Sometimes harder plastic, sometimes silicone. This is typical:
However, there's a downside. Silicone tends to “sweat” a bit of oil over time, and this tends to attract dust and dirt, which then requires soap and water to remove.
I asked my engineer Alex to look into this for me, and he found that there exists a special kind of silicone, which feels silky to the touch, and to which dust does not stick. It's almost skin-like, to the touch. I remember first encountering this silicone on the silicone-covered power cord to an apple laptop, but otherwise, it's not a material I often see.
In the photo above you can see that the white matierial does not reflect light, and it's also remained clean while the black cover is dusty.
We're now testing this new silicone here at Decent HQ. I like it, and I've given Alex the go-ahead.
Once we get these in stock (in about 2 months), they'll be given freely to existing customers, on request as a +1 to any other purchase they're making with us (such as a coffee accessory). We'll have them in black and white, in two lengths (for our two steam wand models).
To swap the sleeve yourself, there's a trick to get it to slide on easily. First, remove the steam wand tip. Then, put some dilute dishwasher liquid inside the sleeve, and all along the shaft length of the steam wand. You can then easily slide the new sleeve on. When the water dries, the sleeve will stay put, and you can wash the detergent off the rest of the wand.
You can find the steam wand sleeve here: https://decentespresso.com/c?filter=sleeve
-john
Updated 2021/07/14