Laminated Wooden Case Brings A Dropped Coffee Grinder Back From The Junk Heap

coffee-grinder-fix

Instead of giving it up for dead, [Suprise Pink Mist] fabricated a replacement case for the motor and blade of his broken coffee grinder. The original enclosure was made of plastic, which didn’t survive being dropped. There isn’t an image of what those plastic parts looked like, but we have to think they were nowhere near as neat as the replacement.

The first step was to cut a set of plywood discs to the approximate outside dimensions. Since the base of the motor has several different diameters each disc had a void cut out of its center to match. The image to the right shows the motor sitting upside down next to the stacked plywood. The black electrical tape seals around the mason jar ring which was a perfect friction fit with the original bowl of the grinder. Once everything was glued together the outside edges were flattened on a belt sander and the mason jar was screwed in place to house the beans during grinding.

[via Reddit]

14 thoughts on “Laminated Wooden Case Brings A Dropped Coffee Grinder Back From The Junk Heap

  1. I like the idea, but didn’t see much more than 4 photos on the web site.
    Last month I threw out a hand held mixer that had been dropped. It’s plastic case was also was too far gone to glue back together. I think something like this would’ve been worth trying in order to save it.

  2. Please do not take HAD down the path of so many other sites by just spamming reddit posts. We get it, the author reads reddit, unfortunately so do many of us, so this is old news and seems like cheap Journalism. -Long time reader

    1. almost all of our posts come from somewhere. It is always unpleasant to find that you’ve already seen it before it reaches us, but it happens. For you, today, it was reddit. We post cool stuff and try to ignore where it came from (except for giving credit). Keep in mind that everyone has seen this, just as surely you’ve enjoyed a project that someone else found redundant.

      1. I really do appreciate the response (so don’t think I’m just hating on HAD), but I’ve noticed the increase in reddit-sourced posts. Consumerist.com started doing this a while back and it drove many users away, myself included (though their security roles played just as big a role). I get that posts have to come from somewhere, but I’d hope that your tipline is active enough to keep from having to turn to reddit for sources. The occasional project I would not quibble about at all, but it’s becoming more regular and as I said before, it cheapens the value of the content you deliver, and we turn to you for. That said, your site is great, keep up the (mostly) great work.

      2. I havn’t seen this – and it’s quite frankly a pretty nice looking build.

        I don’t browse Reddit. I simply do not like that forum. I have nothing against things from there poping up here for example, as long as it’s not EVERYTHING from there – and with a source/build

  3. I dont follow reddit, but I do follow hackaday on a daily basis.
    So Im happy to see this.

    I like the fix, it probably looks a lot better than the original.
    Just imagine what it would look like if it had been put in a lathe and turned.

    1. I don’t have time to trawl reddit, so, like you, I enjoy HAD showing interesting things, regardless of source. A good number of articles come on HAD so there’s enough to fill in quick breaks at work.

      It does look good too, and there’s a heap of excess potential left in the hack.

  4. I like seeing people bring new life to appliances/equipment that others would simply throw away. It is an aspect of “green” thinking and sustainability that most self-proclaimed environmentalists seem to overlook.

    A few thoughts:

    A router would make cutting the interior of each slab a simple matter. Take the time to fix up a little jig, and you could knock out the slabs real quick… with uniformity.

    I have no idea what the original cabinet looked like, but I’d be surprised if it didn’t feature ventilation slots or holes. Those little short-duty universal motors can get mighty hot.

    If you added four rubber feet (rubber-headed tacks) to the underside of the wooden hosing, this would raise the base of the grinder off the counter. You could drill some holes through the floor of the housing to allow air to enter and rise through the interior of the box. Drill some exit holes around the circumference of the box, maybe an inch or so below the top, to allow warm air to escape. Convection will move the air.

    I suspect the composition of the original housing would have been flame-resistant.. or at least self-extinguishing. Plywood , unfortunately, is very easy to ignite and burns well. I would cut a rectangle of aluminum roofing metal, fold it into a square duct shape, and slide it into the interior of the box to provide a liner. Pieces of Kapton, phenolic sheet or “motor paper” could be used as well.

    1. ventilation is a great idea. will make for a longer life for the whole unit. Also, I’d consider including a resetting thermal fuse inside the enclosure… pick a safe intermediate temperature (maybe 180/210 f ?), get a fuse of that value, place in circuit. Good insurance for only a few bucks, tops.

  5. disc now esp US, disk [dɪsk]
    n
    1. a flat circular plate
    2. something resembling or appearing to resemble this the sun’s disc
    3. (Electronics) another word for (gramophone) record
    4. (Life Sciences & Allied Applications / Anatomy) Anatomy any approximately circular flat structure in the body, esp an intervertebral disc
    5. (Life Sciences & Allied Applications / Botany)
    a. the flat receptacle of composite flowers, such as the daisy
    b. (as modifier) a disc floret
    6. (Life Sciences & Allied Applications / Botany) the middle part of the lip of an orchid
    7. (Engineering / Automotive Engineering)
    a. Also called parking disc a marker or device for display in a parked vehicle showing the time of arrival or the latest permitted time of departure or both
    b. (as modifier) a disc zone disc parking
    8. (Electronics & Computer Science / Computer Science) Computing a variant spelling of disk [2]
    vb
    (Life Sciences & Allied Applications / Agriculture) to work (land) with a disc harrow
    [from Latin discus, from Greek diskos quoit]

    The pieces of plywood are not disks.

  6. Personally I do not like the whirly blade grinders. They do a bad job at grinding, leading to grounds that are not uniform in shape, and also cause additional heat to the beans.
    However, the craftsmanship of this is beautiful, and if it saved you a few bucks then great!

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