AutoBarista
SharkNinja · Mechanical Engineer, R&D Coffee | July 2025 – July 2026 |
The Project:
The Ninja AutoBarista automates grinding, dosing, and tamping in a single brew group that handles everything from a single espresso shot to drip coffee. My work focused on making that system extract consistently: diagnosing where prototypes underperformed, quantifying the gaps through controlled flow, pressure, and dosing experiments, and iterating tamp head and screen designs to improve extraction and reduce grounds in the cup.
Test Setup
To find where performance was falling short, I built a test rig that measured the brew system at every stage: water flow into the pump, pressure before the brew basket, dose mass from the grinder, and the final shot’s yield, extraction (via TDS), and shot time.
Every key measurement had an independent cross-check. I compared flow meter readings against the reservoir’s weight change, and the machine’s load cell against the hopper’s weight change. That let me calibrate the sensors and trust the data before acting on it.
The results fed directly back into Grind iQ, the machine’s automatic dial-in system, which I modified to improve how the unit adjusts grind to hit target extraction.
