ok my mistake, not only did they snip a wire but they soldered a new one on.

I think of hacks as modifying a device to do something unintended in a way that is not inherently obvious or in a clever fashion – I don’t think anyone with half a brain would have trouble modifying a popcorn maker to disable the heater.

As for your other point, why not just link to that site directly?

this is a very pop-ular method in home roasting crew. Another is the “corretto” set up …using a paint stripper heat gun for the heat source and a bread maker for the agitation. with roasted costing from $40AU/kg and green beans @ $9AU/kg there is a great incentive to do this…it perhaps might not make a great deal of sense not to…esp if you like coffee.

@Clutchdude

Ok…apparently STUPID me didn’t ready it closely enough on the first read thru.

They had an extra unit laying around that sucked and desired to make it useful.

I wonder if you could still use a single unit though.

too bad coffee doesn’t pop like pop corn, that would be an awesome snack. of course just one popper, with a switch to disable the heater might work just as well and be simpler to just have one piece of equipment.

@aztraph:
Coffee does pop! Not really like popcorn though.

We’ve been roasting for a few months with a unmodified 1500W air popcorn popper. It works great. No modifications are really necessary. Unless I guess you wanted it to be more automatic or have finer roast control. But spending 20 minutes roasting a pound of coffee manually isn’t a chore, it’s fun and challenging to get the roast consistent by watching the smoke, smells, and sounds.