1/31/23, 6:00 PM Motorising a hand-cranked coffee grinder

Motorising a hand-cranked coffee grinder

Motorizing a hand-cranked coffee grinder

We go through periods of drinking coffee in the mornings. Lately, with the 9-month old waking up a
few times in the night and getting up at 6, we are in a coffee drinking phase.

Rachel has this hand-cranked coffee grinder, which works very well, but is a lot of work to crank.
Holding it while cranking it has aggravated a condition called "mommy thumb", so she made a
complicated bracket to help hold it. But lately, we have been leaning towards just buying a nice
(burr style) coffee grinder for a few hundred dollars. But before we do that, I figured I should try
motorizing this one.

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1/31/23, 6:00 PM Motorising a hand-cranked coffee grinder

I happen to have this gear head motor that runs at about 120 RPM that would be perfect for the job.
It came from an ancient mechanical cash register that was given to me in the 80s. It still worked
perfectly until I wanted to see if it could subtract if I turned the motor backward. Then I took it apart.
Yes, I know, today one of these would be worth quite a bit, but 30 years ago nobody knew that.

I just needed to make some coupling piece to turn the grinder from the motor. My first thought was
to just have an arm that sticks out and turns the crank. This would be the simplest, but perhaps a bit
dangerous with that crank flailing around.

So instead I made a coupling piece to go between the motor and the top of the grinder.

I started by drilling two concentric holes in a piece of maple...

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1/31/23, 6:00 PM Motorising a hand-cranked coffee grinder

... then cut a slot in it to fit around a bracket that is just below the crank on the grinder.

Checking how part of the grinder will fit into the bracket I

just made.

I then scratched a circle around it and cut that out round on the bandsaw.

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1/31/23, 6:00 PM Motorising a hand-cranked coffee grinder

And then cut it conical on the other end and sanded the

whole thing smooth.

I also drilled a hole for a pin to lock it to the motor shaft.

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1/31/23, 6:00 PM Motorising a hand-cranked coffee grinder

Checking the fit. I neglected to take into account the knob that locks the crank in place (which I
wanted to keep in place), so I had to make the whole coupling piece again, this time with room for
that knob.

Locking it in place with a piece of copper wire. I figured the softer copper would be better, as it
would shear off if things went badly wrong.

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1/31/23, 6:00 PM Motorising a hand-cranked coffee grinder

I decided to re-use these brackets that were part of the contraption that Rachel made two years
ago to help hold the coffee grinder. These clamp around the top of the grinder with two bolts.

I attached the motor with two metal angle brackets. These had just the right height to hold the
motor.

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1/31/23, 6:00 PM Motorising a hand-cranked coffee grinder

Using my beam compass to mark a semicircle in the base, for the grinder to slide into (this saves
me about 18 mm of height for the whole unit).

The base just attaches to the bottom of the main beam of the contraption using six long screws.
Long wood screws actually hold surprisingly well in end grain.

I then wired things up temporarily with clip leads. The

motor is a capacitor run motor. I'm surprised that 60-year
old capacitor still works. So far so good. I then put some
coffee beans in it and let it grind.

It was very satisfying watching and listening to it grind. I

set the grind to as fine as I could without having the burrs
grinding against each other. But it turns out, ground this
fine, it was impossible to press the hot water through the
grounds with an aero press. The coffee grains just sealed
up! So I have to adjust the setting.

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1/31/23, 6:00 PM Motorising a hand-cranked coffee grinder

With it proven to work, I set out to finish it up. I made a sturdier bracket for the motor, which was cut
from a bracket that used to hold the washing machine motor that I used for this belt grinder.

I hollowed out the back of the main beam to embed the

capacitor and switch inside it, then covered that with a
sheet metal plate.

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1/31/23, 6:00 PM Motorising a hand-cranked coffee grinder

I also attached the crank to the back of it, for "emergency use". The crank is the only part I removed
from the coffee grinder.

And here is how the grinder is attached using two 4" jig bolts and threaded knobs.

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1/31/23, 6:00 PM Motorising a hand-cranked coffee grinder

Finished motorized coffee grinder. Quite the contraption.

We actually also have two $30 coffee grinders, but these don't appear to last very long, which is
why we have been considering a fancy one.

The grinding burr in this hand cranked one is really good, so motorising it is a good option. It's the
manly way to grind coffee!

So far we have been using it for a week.

See also:

Motorizing the apple How induction motors

grinder work

Hexagon cake knife Corner shelf

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Flip handle ramekin Turning a bowl on the

serving tray homemade lathe

Boiled egg hardness Automatic maple syrup

tester boil-o-matic

Baby rocking machine

More Woodwork projects on my Woodworking website

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