3D printing of a simple iced coffee maker in cool summer

For many coffee lovers, a cup of cold iced coffee must have a different flavor on a hot summer day. Recently, JonathanOdom, a designer from San Francisco, has developed a set of designs with the help of 3D printing, so that you can enjoy a wonderful cup of iced coffee at home at low cost. Even better, he shared his design.

In real life, Jonathan is a designer at Instructables Design Studio-what he calls the best job. As a result, he often develops some cool and interesting (and sometimes even complex) projects, but this iced coffee maker should be quite easy to build. As he explained on the Instructables page, it essentially requires only some 3D prints, plus ready-made laboratory glassware and some maple poles. Sounds simple, doesn't it?

Generally speaking, there are several ways to make iced coffee, but this machine is based on the cold bubble method. "using this method, you only need to soak a small amount of coffee grind in cold water and then drop the brewed coffee liquid at a rate of 3 seconds." Jonathan explained that this is actually a way to improve the taste. "my experience is that boiled water releases caffeine and acidity significantly faster than cold water. Soaking ground coffee in cold water and slowly releasing it helps to significantly reduce its sour taste (you can taste this), and what I hear is because it has been soaked for so long (2-6 hours). The amount of caffeine in it is roughly the same as that of hot coffee. "

In any case, Jonathan was very satisfied with the iced coffee and shared his design on Instructables. STL files for all 3D printable parts can be downloaded here for free (please click to download). But you may also need to buy some parts, after all, glassware in the lab is not available in everyone's home.

The design software used by Jonathan is Fusion360, and all the parts are easy to print out in 3D, which can be done by an ordinary 3D printer. The whole process is very simple, although Jonathan also used sandblasting to polish its surface, but this is not necessary, he also sprayed acrylic resin on it, which is also a personal preference.

Assembling itself is fairly simple, especially if you follow Jonathan's tutorials. Please note that the key to the whole process is to create a siphon to ensure a stable drop, which Jonathan is achieved by inserting the brass tube into the stop next to the valve. All other parts can be easily assembled, and some 3D printed parts need to be bonded with epoxy resin.

After the manufacturing is completed, we will enter the most important step: brewing! In fact, the use of this device is quite simple. Fill the upper flask with ice, mouth down, slowly dripping ice water. The funnel itself is covered with filter paper and filled with coffee powder (not too full). "slowly soak the coffee powder in cold water. Slow is the key, because you don't want it to overflow. Cover another piece of filter paper over the minced coffee. The function of this filter paper is to ensure that the water will enter the coffee powder in a uniform way. without it, the water droplets will slowly make a hole in the middle of the coffee, so that the taste of the coffee will be very light. " Jonathan suggested.

In this way, it takes about four hours to brew two cups of coffee (depending on the taste and the rate of caffeine release). It sounds like a long time, but it's a very much-anticipated ceremony for a real coffee lover.