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An interesting thought: coffee is probably much easier to make than arbitrary 3D objects made of various materials. Yet coffee makers have not become as ubiquit

An interesting thought: coffee is probably much easier to make than arbitrary 3D objects made of various materials. Yet coffee makers have not become as ubiquitous as CD burners. What I want to know is why.

drakeandrews 14y ago
I can make coffee with a £5 cafétiere that far outstrips what you get in a cheap coffee maker. Also, pretty much every PC with an optical drive comes with a CD/DVD burner these days. Coffee makers aren't attached to anything else.
damian2000 14y ago
Service, cleaning and maintenance maybe... the coffee from a cafe is prepared by a barista on a professional machine, perhaps tastes a bit better than the one at home, you don't have to clean the cups or equipment later and you don't have anything to maintain.
- shurcooL 14y ago
  That's what I meant to say, why haven't the prices of those professional machines plummeted down to under $100? They're still very expensive. You can imagine there being a machine that does all the cleaning, maintenance, etc. with a push of a button. It's just not as affordable as machines that burn 650 MB of audio data onto optical disks.
  - malandrew 14y ago
    The cost of copper is the reason they haven't dropped in price. Those devices need to very precisely control temperature at high pressures. They are also designed to be able to make many expressos in a row while simultaneously outputting steam for frothing milk. This requires a lot of copper not only for the assembly that the water goes through but for a high pressure reservoir, which also needs to be made from copper. The cost of the copper alone in some of those coffee makers is easily a couple hundred dollars. You also can't mix in another metal with a high specific head like aluminum in places to offset the cost because the presence of both copper and aluminum in the same water path will cause the two to react with one another.

drakeandrews 14y ago

I can make coffee with a £5 cafétiere that far outstrips what you get in a cheap coffee maker. Also, pretty much every PC with an optical drive comes with a CD/DVD burner these days. Coffee makers aren't attached to anything else.

damian2000 14y ago

Service, cleaning and maintenance maybe... the coffee from a cafe is prepared by a barista on a professional machine, perhaps tastes a bit better than the one at home, you don't have to clean the cups or equipment later and you don't have anything to maintain.

shurcooL 14y ago
That's what I meant to say, why haven't the prices of those professional machines plummeted down to under $100? They're still very expensive. You can imagine there being a machine that does all the cleaning, maintenance, etc. with a push of a button. It's just not as affordable as machines that burn 650 MB of audio data onto optical disks.
- malandrew 14y ago
  The cost of copper is the reason they haven't dropped in price. Those devices need to very precisely control temperature at high pressures. They are also designed to be able to make many expressos in a row while simultaneously outputting steam for frothing milk. This requires a lot of copper not only for the assembly that the water goes through but for a high pressure reservoir, which also needs to be made from copper. The cost of the copper alone in some of those coffee makers is easily a couple hundred dollars. You also can't mix in another metal with a high specific head like aluminum in places to offset the cost because the presence of both copper and aluminum in the same water path will cause the two to react with one another.