Improving Heater Insulation and the new-DE1-smell

NEW-DE1-SMELL:

We've been working for several months on figuring out why brand new DE1 machines will give a smell, when warm, for the first few weeks of ownership.

We did eventually track it down to the organic “binder” (aka “glue”) used to hold together the fiberglass fibers in our insulating sheets.  After a few weeks, the smell goes away naturally.

That binder is made of starch, and it turns out that it slowly “toasts” when the heater is hot and touching the insulation.

After a lot of searching, we found someone making 3mm thick fiberglass with a no-smell binder.  The blowtorch test above is more extreme than a 180ºC heater, but it demonstrates the point, and was done for us by our new insulation supplier.  We tested it on monday, in a small closed office, with the heaters set to go to max heat, (until their thermostat safeties limit them), and we're now at no-smell.

BETTER ENERGY EFFICIENCY:

Our espresso-making heater is kept at 99ºC, while the steam heater is at 160ºC.  The heaters are our-design, and are double insulated: first with fiberglass, then with a moulded insulator, that fits tightly and is cable-tied shut.

Our infrared camera shows us that there's not much heat leakage, except at the water in and out connection points.  We use custom made all-metal connectors, not using the off-the-shelf plastic ones, as we prefer the longevity and no-plastic-in-the-water-path approach.

Those metal connectors, do radiate, though.  We're now designing little insulating “socks” that we'll be putting around the three hotspots you can see in the photo.

As the Decent is off most of the day, and warms in 4.5 minutes, our energy usage is already massively lower than a typical machine, which has an uninsulated boiler.  We've had customers report large $ reductions in their monthly electricity bill, after retiring their always-on boiler machines.

But there's always more that can be done, and happily, this project is nearing its conclusion.

The new heaters and insulating socks, should make their way into the October-scheduled v1.44 version.  Once we have the insulating socks, they'll also be available to our existing customers who want to put them on their machines.

-john

#R&D

Updated 2022/05/04