Mount for hand-operated espresso machine

Background

A befriended couple recently bought a 7.60m long sailing boat for primary use on the inland waters around Berlin. This boat needs some more equipment and a lot of work before the season starts. For Christmas Suski therefore chose a hand-operated espresso pump and two matching cups, which she gave to her partner.

Project

Since the small espresso machine would probably fly around without a special holder when sailing with a little list, she wanted to make a holder suitable for boats. Surely she could have made the necessary cut-outs with hand tools, but since the production collided with the preparation of the c-base for the 35c3, she asked me to help her out with the CNC milling machine.

3D model created in Fusion 360

In the first step, I created a 3D model of the object from her 2D sketches.

Since a relatively large amount of material had to be removed, I decided to carry out the machining with a tool change.

3D model with all machine paths

First I removed most of the material with a cylindrical end mill, but left 0.5mm axial and radial. Then I made a finishing pass on the bottom of both cup holders with a end mill and removed the remaining 0.5mm. The rest of the machining was done with a round cutter, which removed the “stairs” left by the cylinder cutter and gave the surface the rounding that was planned.

After machining with the cylindrical end milling cutter

Finalisation

Suski did the finishing alone, without me. After the CNC work was finished, the workpiece had to be cut out of the board and the two feet had to be glued, also some work with sandpaper was necessary. Finally a simple surface refinement with hard oil was carried out.

Success

We have tested the holder and found that the small hand-operated coffee machine does not fall out up to an angle of inclination where the tip of the mast has long since been submerged under water. The cups hold up to approx. 60° listing angle. In extreme cases (outside an accident) no more than 30-40° can be expected on this type of boat.

Images

Here are some more pictures of the project: