Pocket size Espresso Machine with integrated alcohol stove.

Step 12 The Brew Head.

Design.

I ground 7 grams of coffee to see how much volume it took up. Then I looked over the parts that I had that could be made into the brew head. Since the boiler is really small, I decided to use another 1 to ½ in reducer as the main body of the brew head, so that I could get an espresso cup under and between it and the boiler. The reason I needed to do this was because of the small size of the machine. If I couldn’t fit the cup in there, I would have to place the espresso maker on a higher level than the cup, and that would have to be an add-on, braking constraint 4 and possibly 1.
Fortunately, everything fit great.
The last problem to overcome came from finding a way to make the metal filters that espresso makers use.
Since drilling very small holes in metal with a hand drill is rather hard, and very likely to snap the drill (and a small drill press would brake constraint 3), I had to come up with a simpler method.
A few experiments later I had the technique nailed down.


Note: Some people have expressed a bit of concern about the use of copper and food. Since the brew head is the only part of the machine that touches food (essential, life giving food :D ) you may consider:
A) Tinning the interior of the brew head and filters
B) Using a different type of metal for the brew head and filters