CA3072696A1 - Intelligent coffee grinder and weigher - Google Patents

Description

Farhad Saberi <farhad saberi@yahoo.com>
1669 Balmoral ave.
Coquitlam, B.C.
Canada V3J5Y7 Intelligent Coffee grinder and weigher I am seeking a patent for the following invention: This invention provides a method for a user to grind whole Coffee Beans according to the user's predefined coffee ground weight.
Background Of The Invention Serious Coffee drinkers like to use freshly grounded whole coffee beans to brew their coffee and not store aside ground coffee, as ground coffee exposed to air will lose its freshness and aroma.
There are all kinds of different coffee grinders out there. Manual ones that turn slowly and squeeze and crush the beans between two walls that are increasingly close to each other so that eventually ground coffee falls down from between the two walls. There are also electrical ones that turn a blade at a very high speed to chop the coffee beans into powder, similar to how a lawnmower spins its blade.
Brewing coffee, for drip coffee or pour over coffee, three factors determine the consistency and strength of the drink. One is the temperature of the water used for brewing, two is the amount of water used, and finally the amount of coffee ground used. We can easily measure the amount of water at hand and its temperature is easily obtained using a thermometer. But the amount of coffee ground being used is only accurate if it is weighed.
Coffee houses preparing pour over brewing generally prepare their hot water at eighty five degrees centigrade, then grind the coffee beans if they don't already have a container of ground coffee available, then use an external scale to weigh their desired amount of ground coffee to use.
Same overhead is applied when brewing coffee with a drip coffee machine. For example if brewing for ten cups of coffee, the barista has to use a scale to get the right amount of coffee ground to use. The amount of coffee used cannot be measured visually.
It is the weight of the ground coffee that determines how strong or light (watery) the brewed coffee will be.
Summary Of The Invention Many coffee store chains are provided with prepackaged ground coffee. The barista uses one pack per brew. But many specialized coffee shops and at home coffee enthusiasts use a grinding machine plus an external scale to get an exact water to ground coffee ratio.
This has two down sides. One is that it is a slow process. Once a certain amount of coffee ground is produced, the barista has to transfer the ground coffee onto a scale for weighing.
This is a slow and cumbersome process. And then any excess coffee ground has to be removed and stored for the next brew. It leads to waste and old coffee ground being used in the next brew, mixed with the newly fresh ground coffee. A better process is needed.
My invention removes these two major drawbacks mentioned in the above paragraph. No amounts of ground coffee will ever be left over to be used for a later brew, and no external scale is needed. With this new Intelligent Coffee Grinder and Weigher, the barista tells the machine that he/she wants exactly, for example, twenty five grams of ground coffee. The machine then will precisely grind in its tray exactly twenty five grams amount of ground coffee. No more or less. Then the barista can directly transfer the ground coffee from the grinder tray to the brewing machine, whether it is a pour over brew or a drip coffee machine or a french press. This saves the barista lots of time and avoids any need to store previously left over ground coffee which is prone to loose flavor and aroma.
It also provides the barista a much cleaner and tidier workspace by also eliminating an external scale.
I have already created a prototype of such an Intelligent Coffee Grinder and Weigher and it functions perfectly.
Detailed Description Of The Invention Figure 1 shows a top-down drawing of the Intelligent Coffee Grinder and Weigher machine.

Fig1-1: The box that contains all electronic components.
Fig1-2: OLED display or LCD display used to display Mode and weight of coffee.
Fig1-3: Select Mode Button. Mode can be Manual or Weight.
Fig1-4: Start/Stop Button used to start/stop grinding motor.
Fig1-5: If in Weight Mode, the Potentiometer selects how many grams of coffee ground to produce.
Fig1-6: Button to zero/tare the scale.
Fig1-7: speed reduction gear box Fig1-8: Electric DC Motor Fig1-9: Whole coffee Bean container.
Fig1-10: drawer where coffee ground gathers into.
Fig1-11: The scale measuring coffee ground produced. The drawer will sit on top of this scale.
I have taken a Manual Coffee grinder which is widely available in the consumer market and added to it a high torque speed reduced geared DC Electric motor (Fig1.
7,8). This Motor spins the cone that grinds whole coffee beans at about sixty rounds per minute. As ground coffee is being collected in the tray shown in Fig1.10, a scale measures, every two hundred and fifty milliseconds (four time per second), the total weight of ground coffee in the tray.
If coffee is being grounded in Manual mode, the weight of the ground coffee is ignored.
The motor will continue to spin and grind coffee beans until the user manually presses the Stop Button. If the grinding is in the Weight Mode, as soon as the desired weight is reached, the micro-controller will automatically stop the motor. Leaving in the tray the exact amount of ground coffee, by weight, the user requested.
Figure 2 shows details of the circuitry involved.
Fig2.1: A micro-controller, such as an Arduino, Teensy or Raspberry Pie.
Fig2.2: Step Down Buck Converter. 24 volts to 5 Volts to feed into the micro-controller.
Fig2.3: A Potentiometer. Used to define its value as the requested amount of coffee ground in grams. A digital keypad can also be used to provide this input value.

Fig2.4: 0.96 inch OLED display or a 16x2 Crystal LCD display used to provide User Feedback.
Fig2.5: 3 push buttons are connected to the micro-controller providing user inputs.
Fig2.6: DC Electric Motor. The rest of the circuit is protected from the Motor's Magnetic Electric Field using a 3Amp diode.
Fig2.7: MOSFET Module allows the motor to operate at 24Volts while the micro-controller and the sensors are operating at 5v.
Fig2.8: LoadCell Amplifier module HX711.
Fig2.9: LoadCell, used to measure the weight of ground coffee.
I have used the micro-controller Arduino Nano for my prototyping. Its program is written in C. The user feedback I use is an LCD or OLED display, both works with my code.
Finally there are two pictures of an actual prototype of this machine in perfect working condition.