Steaming in two stages
New firmware from Ray landed at Decent Espresso today. Previously, we've used one dedicated 1500W heater, running at 160ºC, for making steam, using room temperature water. That steam heater has a 1.2 tube length on it. Today's firmware now uses the espresso heater to preheat the water from 20ºC to 95ºC, before it then goes to the 160ºC steam heater.
We still have the same amount of current available to us (1500W total) but now we're seeing greater steam power because (1) we've doubled the heating tube length, to 2.4 meters, and (2) we've used our water mixing technology to stabilize the steam, as the input is now always 95ºC, almost water vapor already.
The new firmware is on the v1.3 machine on the left. The old firmware is on the right. You can see that the steam is “thicker” and goes about 30% higher toward the ceiling now. It's also jumped from 2 bar of pressure, to a bit over 3 bar.
We'll be testing this new firmware over the next few weeks, and it'll then be made available for free to all DE1 owners. Even our v1.0 machines will be able to use this new firmware and approach to steam.
-john
Updated 2020/08/17