Argos Update: March 15th, 2022

Continued progress on the shop, design details, ordering, and testing. Built a packaging station and shelving at the shop this weekend. We are starting a small shop build “vlog” consisting of some short video clips as things get built and placed around the shop. These may turn out horrible but William has offered to edit the videos together as long as I capture some content to give everyone a bit more behind the scenes insight as things come to fruition.

Hardware

Continued testing on 8 bar spring option.

Sourcing more small parts to sell

Patent paperwork has been filed. The spring issue resulted from a common obscurity with lever machines. As the piston rises, the brew chamber is filled with air which must be replaced with water. Some of this air escapes through the fine grounds of coffee but the rest of it forms an air pocket between the water and the piston. Since air is compressible, when the lever is released, the first half of it’s distance traveled is spent compressing air.

The force applied by the compressed spring on the column of water is determined by Hooke’s Law: F=kx where F is the force, k is a spring constant, and x is the piston displacement. If the first half of the piston displacement is spent compressing air, then we only get the second half generating force for extraction.

To alleviate this, I designed in a simple bleed/ check valve into the piston as shown below. In this design, a small stainless steel ball sits on a spring in the middle of a passage. This allows air to flow in the nominal position as the ball is not blocking the hole. As the chamber fills with fluid, the higher density of the water entering the small passage causes a pressure increase which pushes the ball up against the o-ring, sealing the chamber off. This design has been validated in testing and will be implemented in all Argos units.

I will be working on getting the Ash wood components finished up with the hopes for some new photos later this week.

Diagram of our patent pending integrated bleed valve.

Software

William has received the scale and transducer and has continued to implement feedback from beta testers using the app.

We have heard back from Atomax who has provided the necessary documentation and resources for implementing the Skale smart espresso scale to our app.

If there is a scale that you use that we do not currently support, you may help us out by emailing the following prompt to the company in hopes that we hear back from them:

“Hi, I'm an owner of INSERT SCALE and I have also ordered an Odyssey Espresso Argos lever espresso machine. https://www.odysseyespresso.com/shop/argos-lever-espresso-machine. They have a companion app for their machine that plots pressure and scale weight and I would like to be able to use INSERT SCALE with their app. Can you reach out to them at info@odysseyespresso.com to coordinate an integration?”

Tasks for this week

Continue ordering shop tools and equipment

Get powder coating parts out

Getting more parts sourced and on our site including Spare Seal Kit, Puck Screen, and Espresso Glasses.

Thanks,

Ross Ainsworth