Inverted Piston Espresso
A maximally compact method of producing true 9 bar espresso
Designed and build during a 2024 hackathon by:
Mechanical Team: Myself, Vince Thornberg, Lock Moore, Luke Arnone
Electrical and Integration: Hannah Bartoshesky, Tony Wu, Kirsty Chau
Overview
In early 2024, finding myself down a Youtube rabbit hole of espresso machine teardowns, I decided that despite the many flavors of espresso machines in existence, some of the most compelling design permutations had not been tried yet.
To me, there were three uniquely compelling products on the market:
The 9Barista: A gorgeous portable stovetop device that was uniquely compact and inverted the espresso making process pushing water up rather than down through a puck.
The Decent DE1: The original tech-forward consumer espresso machine, featuring flow-profiling, pressure-profiling, and volumetric dosing.
The Meticulous Espresso: A lever-style machine in spirit, where the lever has been replaced with a linear actuator.
I felt that there could be an interesting marriage of concepts from all three of the machines involving the inverted nature of the 9Barista, the linear actuation of the Meticulous, and the profiling capabilities of the Decent. And so, I threw this slide onto a hackathon pitch deck, managed to get a large team, and started designing.
Early Architecture and Planning
Sometimes there are many decisions to debate and agree one, this project was not one of those cases. We knew what we wanted to make right from the start, and we were going to make it because it seemed cool.
Under Construction
Come Back Later!