The Grinders (in order of appearance):Baratza Sette 270: https://www.baratza.com/product/settetm-270-zcg1270Timemore 064S: https://www.timemore.com/products/...
A car is a solved problem. So please, buy a used Honda civic and use it to haul 10 tons of stone up a steep incline. Day in and day out.
A bit hyperbolic, but the issue is one of specialization and volume. These grinders see small sales and have very special configurations. To produce something like that costs more money than a spinning wheel grinder. On the other hand it is consistent in scope and output with many issues resolved via many production iterations or through manufacturing processes which are difficult to scale.
Yes at some point the prices to benefit ratio drops, but seriously, grinders (next to the beans themselves) are the most important part in the taste of your coffee. Don’t you feel like you deserve the best?
That’s not a bit hyperbolic, it’s a full blown straw man argument.
There is nothing inherently expensive in a good grinder, not from an engineering, manufacturing or materials perspective. Sure small volume manufacturing is more expensive, but we’re still talking brands making thousands of units and not small one-off productions, so it’s not that much more expensive.
I want a good grinder, and I also want to pay for quality. They simply charge more for the equipment than I believe is reasonable, because the amount of work and cost required to produce the product is fairly low.
The costs you are minimizing are extremely high. Things like engineering, cost of manufacture, heck even the cost of a higher quality motor with less play/tight tolerances is vastly more expensive than you are letting on. Figure parts costs alone on a base model grinder are around 20 dollars for a 200 dollar sale price. Most of these are probably in the 200 dollar range with more time required to assemble.
In comparing a <200 dollar grinder to a 700 dollar grinder like the niche, the difference is night and day for parts, layout, and requirements for output. Plus the cost of higher quality burr sets and tight tolerance burr carriers.
The per unit costs associated with what is required to produce a small output, high quality part is high. How many units do you think each one of these companies makes? Compare that to baratza or kitchen aid. It’s not even in the same ballpark.
Obviously it goes towards insanity with the 3k dollar plus units, but then again many of them are commercial focused and can happily churn out hundreds of pounds of ground beans. Or into fully billet cnc machines one offs.
A car is a solved problem. So please, buy a used Honda civic and use it to haul 10 tons of stone up a steep incline. Day in and day out.
A bit hyperbolic, but the issue is one of specialization and volume. These grinders see small sales and have very special configurations. To produce something like that costs more money than a spinning wheel grinder. On the other hand it is consistent in scope and output with many issues resolved via many production iterations or through manufacturing processes which are difficult to scale.
Yes at some point the prices to benefit ratio drops, but seriously, grinders (next to the beans themselves) are the most important part in the taste of your coffee. Don’t you feel like you deserve the best?
That’s not a bit hyperbolic, it’s a full blown straw man argument.
There is nothing inherently expensive in a good grinder, not from an engineering, manufacturing or materials perspective. Sure small volume manufacturing is more expensive, but we’re still talking brands making thousands of units and not small one-off productions, so it’s not that much more expensive.
I want a good grinder, and I also want to pay for quality. They simply charge more for the equipment than I believe is reasonable, because the amount of work and cost required to produce the product is fairly low.
The costs you are minimizing are extremely high. Things like engineering, cost of manufacture, heck even the cost of a higher quality motor with less play/tight tolerances is vastly more expensive than you are letting on. Figure parts costs alone on a base model grinder are around 20 dollars for a 200 dollar sale price. Most of these are probably in the 200 dollar range with more time required to assemble.
In comparing a <200 dollar grinder to a 700 dollar grinder like the niche, the difference is night and day for parts, layout, and requirements for output. Plus the cost of higher quality burr sets and tight tolerance burr carriers.
The per unit costs associated with what is required to produce a small output, high quality part is high. How many units do you think each one of these companies makes? Compare that to baratza or kitchen aid. It’s not even in the same ballpark.
Obviously it goes towards insanity with the 3k dollar plus units, but then again many of them are commercial focused and can happily churn out hundreds of pounds of ground beans. Or into fully billet cnc machines one offs.