Breville coffee grinders are impossible to get internal parts for. I designed a 3D printed upgrade for the main wear-part in their BCG800XL SmartGrinder.
The storefront is through ShapeWays[1] and I use ifixit[2] to drive the traffic. It's passively making ~$425/mo with about 10 minutes of work per week on my end. This all happened because my grinder failed and I couldn't get parts.
> Sandpaper and a file are likely optional. They are only necessary if the 3D printed impeller isn't a perfect fit.
Do you get any "support" queries from people who buy the impeller and then try to fit it, and it's tight (by your own admission a deliberate design choice) and they try to email you or return the impeller? Not trolling, genuinely curious.
About once per month. I purposely set expectations low by saying it may take a little sanding. That lets me over-deliver since it's usually a perfect fit. Also, ShapeWays has a decent refund policy and customer service for stuff under their responsibility.
Also, anything that comes up that takes significant back and forth with a customer, I immediately add to the iFixit writeup. All the troubleshooting steps at the bottom were a result of questions that came in at the beginning. This was a lot of work up front, but it's thankfully just a trickle now.
I'm an amateur at this part, but I've reason to believe it's fine.
The material is a Nylon plastic. "Polyamide PA 2200" according to ShapeWays. This link[1] has details on the material when used with laser sintering and in regard to contact with food. The key quote is "[...]are in compliance with EU Plastics Directive 2002/72/EC for the use with all types of foods except high alcoholic foodstuffs[...]"
That said, there is a porosity issue with 3D printed parts and consequently dry coffee coats the impeller and sticks to the surface right away. It's a big problem if in contact with dairy, meat, liquids, etc. because it harbors bacteria. For this reason, ShapeWays does not claim to be food-grade. I don't think it matters for dry coffee though. Nevertheless, there's a writeup about this on the storefront so customers can make the call if they care about stale coffee on their impeller or not.
Was thinking the same. Looks like the original plastic part is destined to be slowly ground and consumed by the user, the printed one will have the same fate.
This is awesome! I have that grinder, but haven't had this issue (yet...). My only issue is that the lowest grind setting isn't quite fine enough for some beans, but with your pictures I think I can actually see where to shove a tiny shim to make that work better too. I'd always intended to do that but hadn't ever gotten around to it.
Metal is too expensive still. Next step is porcelain. I made one prototype so far. It failed because the glazing process "puffed" the surface out of acceptable tolerance. I plan to inversely deform the mesh to compensate for this when I get around to another attempt.
The storefront is through ShapeWays[1] and I use ifixit[2] to drive the traffic. It's passively making ~$425/mo with about 10 minutes of work per week on my end. This all happened because my grinder failed and I couldn't get parts.
[1] https://www.shapeways.com/product/NASLAGCCP/breville-bcg800x...
[2] https://www.ifixit.com/Guide/BCG800XL+Grinder+Jamming+due+to...