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Breville coffee grinders are impossible to get internal parts for. I designed a 3D printed upgrade for the main wear-part in their BCG800XL and BCG600SIL Grinde
by gottebp 7y ago
Breville coffee grinders are impossible to get internal parts for. I designed a 3D printed upgrade for the main wear-part in their BCG800XL and BCG600SIL Grinders.
The storefront is through ShapeWays[1] and I use iFixit[2],[3] to drive the traffic. It passively makes enough to cover my own coffee needs forever. I spend about 20 minutes per month fielding questions. This all happened because my grinder failed and I could not get parts.
[1] https://www.shapeways.com/product/NASLAGCCP/breville-coffee-grinder-impeller-upgrade https://www.shapeways.com/product/NASLAGCCP/breville-coffee-...
[2] https://www.ifixit.com/Guide/BCG800XL+Grinder+Jamming+due+to+Worn+Impeller/62905 https://www.ifixit.com/Guide/BCG800XL+Grinder+Jamming+due+to...
[3] https://www.ifixit.com/Guide/BCG600SIL+Dose+Control+Pro+Coffee+Grinder+-+Jamming+due+to+Worn+Impeller/96493 https://www.ifixit.com/Guide/BCG600SIL+Dose+Control+Pro+Coff...
- october_sky 7y agoClever. Do you have the intention to make more replacement parts for other products?
- gottebp 7y agoI would like to if time permits. There is a huge untapped market here. The difficulty is in locating the parts that are both unavailable and 3D printable. I keep it in the back of my head as I repair other items. So much expensive stuff ends up in a landfill over a tiny part. I could see someday having a github project for replacement parts, each one iterating and getting better an better -- far beyond the original.
- avip 7y agoAll plastic parts for appliances: dish drawer wheels, fridge shelves - are all designed to not last, run for $$$ on vendor site if possible to find at all. If you print it - they would come.
- tyingq 7y agoI'd look into little parts for classic cars. Almost no price sensitivity, and if you find some unmet need for a popular one... Could even be something silly, like a plastic fuse extractor tool that people will pay $50 for if it looks OEM.
- grecy 7y agoThis. A friend buys and restores old Porsche 911s. He will pay anything for custom made parts that are rare as hens teeth. As an example there is a housing around the main cooling fan that seems to be titanium or aluminum or something very exotic. [1] A company does sell a replacement, which he paid a fortune for, which had garbage tolerances and we spent weeks modifying it until it fit more or less well enough. I suspect if you spent time on "classic car" forums you'd find owners of very specific models of cars searching for things you could make and sell for any markup, and every owner would buy one. [1] Its the silver part in this photo, which the alternator mounts to and must be precisely centered https://rennlist.com/forums/attachments/993-forum/1236047d1501791993-engine-cooling-fan-options-7b724c4d.jpg https://rennlist.com/forums/attachments/993-forum/1236047d15...
- gulleyd 7y agoI would actually like to hear a little more about why the tolerances were poor. Were the major diameters the issue here? I could see a lot of adjustment happening on a car-to-car basis to get concentricity between the alternator fan and the shroud just right. I have very little experience with Porsches, but am a coordinate metrologist for a major aerospace parts manufacturer. I don't see something like this being a huge issue, at least compared to what I deal with on a day-to-day basis. Edit: I actually looked into it a little more- it looks like the part is probably machined from casting given that there appear to be four stators which also locate the center mounting point. That's where the concentricity would be set; not by the casting, but by the machining of the center flange. So assuming that the fan's mounting points are within spec, I would say that your friend's part could just be chalked up to machining process that leaves something to be desired. This is actually a trickier part if machined from casting (without the appropriate tooling), but actually pretty simple (and wildly expensive) if machined from billet.
- NeedMoreTea 7y ago> parts that are both unavailable Depends on your pricing and margins. There's a huge number of parts that are available but ridiculously priced, often coming out an order of magnitude in excess of what seems reasonable. Take for instance a kettle scale filter. OK you probably can't 3d print these, but for something so simple they're insanely priced - £5-£15 for a bit of plastic. A whole kettle with filter costs typically £15-£35. Dyson parts are even sillier. e.g. https://www.amazon.co.uk/Genuine-Philips-Kettle-Filter-HD4671-60/dp/B00AAB2WMS https://www.amazon.co.uk/Genuine-Philips-Kettle-Filter-HD467... There may be a far wider range of parts you could profit from than you may think. :)
- avip 7y agoMy car was EOL 2011. The e-windows 4-switch costs 300$ for original and there’s no replacement. I’ll be extremely happy to beta test this market...
- dyarosla 7y agoAfter material costs, time, shipping, advertising, & customer support, how much margin do you think there is to make on a part that already sells at £5-15 (ESP in an environment where spending £15-30 to get a new one is an accepted norm already)? This is def not viable from my view- at least not for parts that are this cheap already.
- NeedMoreTea 7y agolol. 99% of it is margin - it's 50% of the whole retail item cost for <1% of the material or complexity. That's most of it left for promotion. Domestic appliances, large and small, regularly have small spare parts that attract 25 or 50% of the price of the entire item. Never used to. That they're already doing well with small appliances in the niche of non-available parts says enough about pricing floor.
- fyfy18 7y agoI recently had to replace the side wheel motor assembly on a Roomba. The motor and housing were fine, but the gears inside had worn out. I think they were just made out of ABS, so if they were printed in Nylon they would be a lot longer wearing. Roomba do make their robots (at least the 620 I have) repairable and a replacement of the whole assembly was only £20 so I'm not sure if the margin is there, but it is a bit wasteful when the only issue was the gears. I've also considered creating some upgrades to the stock parts, but it's on my "some day I'll get around to it" list.
- pletnes 7y agoDid you check out grabcad? Kinda sorta like github, but for things rather than code.
- dplgk 7y agoThe hard part is finding appliances that need fixing. This is super easy if you happen to own a lot do things that break. If not, it becomes quite boring and tedious to scout out things that are breaking for other people, that you have no personal motivation to fix, to get the broken appliance and then figure out the 3d model for the bad part.
- tlrobinson 7y agoIt seems like once you build up a critical mass of reputation/SEO you could get people to send you their broken parts to reproduce (then start advertising that specific part too)
- dplgk 7y agoThen that depends on either how much they're paying for the part and how much you enjoying 3d modeling and the trial and error dof 3d printing. You'll also need at least a real version of the part to copy and maybe even the appliance.
- microtherion 7y agoA few years ago I bought a replacement part for a baby stroller: https://www.shapeways.com/shops/bugabooparts https://www.shapeways.com/shops/bugabooparts It's a neat business model: The person posts DIY repair videos on youtube, which drives traffic to his site. The strollers can easily cost $1000 new, and are often handed down / resold, so there is motivation to keep them running, and they have some weak spots which tend to break. The 3D printed replacement parts can be of superior quality to the original parts.
- kwiens 7y agoYes! We have guides for doing Bugaboo repairs using 3D printed parts on iFixit. https://www.ifixit.com/Guide/Bugaboo+Cameleon+1+and+3++Handlebar+Clip+Replacement/107457 https://www.ifixit.com/Guide/Bugaboo+Cameleon+1+and+3++Handl... https://www.ifixit.com/Guide/Bugaboo+Cameleon+1+and+3+Swivel+Wheel+Lock+Replacement/107401 https://www.ifixit.com/Guide/Bugaboo+Cameleon+1+and+3+Swivel... https://www.ifixit.com/Guide/Bugaboo+Cameleon+1+and+3+Brake+Handle+Replacement/107741 https://www.ifixit.com/Guide/Bugaboo+Cameleon+1+and+3+Brake+...
- rschapman 7y agoMy wife bought your part and it worked perfectly. She was really happy when she found it. Thanks for making this part available.
- madengr 7y agoHad a Breville expresso machine I repaired multiple times for my wife. The pump was decent, but the electronics were complete garbage for a $500 machine. The main problem were unsealed switches in a humid environment.
- sridca 7y agoIf you are someone that drinks no more than 1-3 cups a day, then I see no pointing getting an electric grinder over a higher-quality manual grinder, like the Comandante C40.
- mkbkn 7y agoI think I have read this before here on HN. Cool business though.
- Atamari 7y agoWould you look into teaming up? My father has an appliance repair company in Florida. He could be interested
- mrfusion 7y agoIs it good grade plastic? Do you print it yourself? Want to team up on an a milk gallon jug attachment to pour cleanly?
- mdorazio 7y agoIf OP is selling via Shapeways, it's printed and shipped by Shapeways in the user's choice of material. From the link, it looks like the only option for this one is Nylon, but that's about the strongest plastic you can get for things like gears.
- IanCal 7y agoNot necessarily suggesting it for this, but for anyone not used to shapeways they have a wide range of materials, with plastics of different types, metals (I have silver wedding rings I got printed there) and ceramics. I think sellers may be able to limit the materials to known working ones (each material has it's own requirements).
- josinalvo 7y ago> metals (I have silver wedding rings I got printed there) was it to save money? or for some unique design?
- IanCal 7y agoThe goal was the unique design, but they were cheap too for wedding rings. I recorded each of us saying something to the other, then took the waveforms and made a ring from each one. Printing came to about £40 for each ring. https://photos.google.com/share/AF1QipMECi57zKtD6arv_-sL83gpYrrMLTo0UBI1KqVQWxYUcQSlHYKr4Vz2AwK5n4gJGA?key=Rm5Ya3RHT3ZWekxzaEI0c280YXJyclFJREZIenN3 https://photos.google.com/share/AF1QipMECi57zKtD6arv_-sL83gp...
- kitten_smuggler 7y agoThat's really cool, is there any way to scan it from your phone and hear it?
- pettycashstash2 7y agoI recently ordered a part for my daughters dresser drawer - the Kenlin Rite-TrackII, and paid $12 for four including shipping. 6 to 7 years ago I paid $68 for a single part. To my surprise when I opened my recent plastic mailer envelope, I discovered it was a 3D printed piece. Any idea how one can 3d scan a part for exact copy?
- vorpalhex 7y agoThey make full on 3d scanners but most parts do not need "3d scanning" so much as they need a few minutes in the hand of someone with a caliper and a sketch pad.
- whynotpoppy 7y agoNever did it, but in Windows 10 you can is Kinect to 3d scan an item, it's on the Todo project list...
- jwagenet 7y agoThere are a few services including Autodesk ReCap which you can give a number of high quality photos and a 3D model will be produced which you can then scale appropriately in your CAD software
- gnopgnip 7y agoThe field of photogrammetry deals with taking multiple photos of something to create a 3d model. There is free software for consumers that can do this. But there are a lot of limitations and currently the traditional way of making a CAD model more or less by hand is almost always faster/cheaper and more accurate.
- daotoad 7y agoFor most things scanning works pretty poorly. IME, you are better off you use some calipers and a free to use tool like Fusion 360 or TinkerCAD, or a really free tool like OpenSCAD to generate the model.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- deagle50 7y agoThanks! My 800XL grinder failed a few months ago, now I'll be taking it apart and buying your part if necessary.
- cdata 7y agoJust wanted to jump on the bandwagon and say that you saved us from buying an entirely new grinder about a year ago. Thanks so much!
- grogenaut 7y agoare you concerned about the low amounts of ground nylon that your customers (or really the original customers) were ingesting if this part does wear down over time?
- gottebp 7y agoPA2200 Nylon is not water soluble so any particles would stay with the discarded grounds. It’s pretty harmless stuff anyway. Breville’s version wears fast but the ShapeWays one has held up really well. Check out the two year wear study on the ShapeWays shop page; I am really happy with how minimal it is.
- grogenaut 7y agoAah I wasn't thinking it through. I guess as long as the fragments are caught in the filter during the coffee making it's likely fine. And for some reason I forgot that coffee is essentially strained/filtered. I have a jura and so I just press a button and it goooooess.
- jv22222 7y agoThis is my favorite side project that I've ever heard of. It's so cool how you stumbled into it and there's a lot of scope for other products too!
- bonestamp2 7y agoI know a guy who runs a multi-million dollar business making replacement parts for a particular type of business machine that you find in a lot of places. There are only a few OEMs and they all stopped making a similar (critical) component for their older models. He was originally in the business of repairing these machines and then discovered he could no longer buy these parts from the OEMs so he learned CAD and CNC and injection molding and started making them a few years ago. He has a 3D printer for prototyping, but he needs to injection mold part of the final product because there is no filament in the particular material that he needs. His business has transitioned from repair to manufacturing and now he mostly sells replacement parts to other repair shops. I don't want to disturb his business by talking about it in detail, but the point is that I think there are and will be many opportunities around repair parts that manufacturers are unwilling to provide because they'd rather be selling new machines. Aside from the environmental impact, that's fine since there are many people who won't go the repair route, and then there's a secondary market for those who will make parts and repair the machines.
- pryelluw 7y agoI used to know tool and die makers that did that back in the day. Sadly, a lot of manufacturing was sent off to China. I assume there are Chinese people doing similar things.
- jenno 7y agoI'm willing to bet the quality of a lot of these is shite, though. Plus people in the US would most likely want to buy from a seller in the US (faster shipping + implied better quality). There is a solution to so many problems here (creating usually unavailable parts for machines/devices/products) but the problem is knowing which parts are in demand and currently have no supplier. A maker would need to have an interest or hobby in such a device & discover a need for the item for it to come into fruition. But just think of how many general 3D printed parts could be printed as solutions for so many products out there that are going unmade.
- gniv 7y agoHmm. So my rearview camera in my car just died and a bit of research revealed it's a common problem with this car model. Maybe I should try to fix it.
- heywire 7y agoI use a super cheap hand grinder I bought off amazon (the stainless steel one that there are 100 different variations of on amazon). There is a plastic part that breaks after about 6 months of usage. Someone modeled and uploaded a replacement piece to Thingiverse. The grinder is cheap enough that it is disposable, but since it is so easy to print a replacement piece with my $179 3D printer, I haven’t needed to throw it away. I hope that at some point 3D printing becomes more accessible and affordable, and with more materials, that more and more products are repaired instead of replaced.
- HenryBemis 7y agoWho you mind sharing what printer make and model you are using?
- heywire 7y agoCreality Ender-3, ordered from Banggood.
- borgel 7y agoAnother random datapoint. I have been using a Monoprice MP Select Mini V2 [1] for a couple years (similar price point) and am extremely pleased. After leveling the bed the first time I've done no maintenance and it seems to print when asked with no trouble. I typically use it not at all for a few months, then up to multiple times a day when working on something. [1] https://www.monoprice.com/product?p_id=15365 https://www.monoprice.com/product?p_id=15365
- kfriede 7y agoI've helped a friend with this one (I have a MP Select V2 full size), and I can tell you the thing is a workhorse. Pretty sure he has it running 5 days a week with 5-7 hour prints per day. He keeps the moving parts lubricated but that's about it. Just set him up with Octoprint to make the loading and monitoring easier.
- agumonkey 7y ago
- jamestimmins 7y agoThis is awesome! I'm curious tho, is there not a trademark/patent that prevents you from making/selling these?
- avidsapp 7y agoI saw this response to the same question several years ago. I'm glad you're still at it. Kudos.
- dahx4Eev 7y agoIs the plastic from Shapeways safe for a grinder in terms of food safety?