Coffee Maker: Pumping water with no moving parts

Bill takes apart a coffee maker to show how hot water is pumped through it using a "bubble pump." The use of this pump reflects an engineer's choice to have only one heating element to lower the cost.

Category:

Science & Technology

Tags:

• Bill Hammack
• engineer guy
• engineering
• coffee maker
• pumps
• university of Illinois

[lordjavathe3rd]

Some of engineering is so impressive that I'm surprised learning about it hasn't become more of a pop culture movement. I think that a lot of the engineering programming out there already, is too dumbed down to deliver how amazing the various achievements really were. Which is why I'm glad that you are here making these interesting videos; hats of to you and your team sir.

[engineerguyvideo]

@lordjavathe3rd I get a fair amount of email asking about whether we'd consider a tv show, but I'm not sold that we could be as technical - and yes I understand there is much, much more technical that us - as we can in a medium like YouTube. So that's a good point you raise.

[JimmyDThing]

I love your videos, but I have to mention. This "problem" could be solved by using a thermal carafe, then you wouldn't need a heating element for the carafe at all... in face, this is the better way to go because the heating element burns the coffee.

The biggest problem for drip coffee makers is getting the water to the proper temperature (just below boiling) when it hits the grinds.

[engineerguyvideo]

@JimmyDThing Fair enough. . . . But you would not be solving the same problem in some sense: Now to make a very cheap coffee maker. . . . Yours would likely be more expensive. What you are getting ag is what best means in an engineering sense. I would define it in reference to constraints. Thus a BMW may not, e.g., be a better solution than a Yugo.

[xicer0]

"engineering is the art of doing that well with one dollar which any bungler can do with two" -- Arthur M. Wellington

[engineerguyvideo]

@xicer0 I'd heard that, but forgot about it! That's really the point of this whole video series ... its about showing how engineers do exactly what Wellington says.

[engineerguyvideo]

@300pzl Well .....

[OtherPlanetsSkate]

I'm always repairing other peoples things too.

[jellymelly829]

great now i have to find @300pzl 's comment

[QskullcandyQ]

I think my "ball" is stuck, so almost no water comes trough, is there any way to fix it, i tried to open the machine but, 2 of the screws are waaay to stuck.

[d3stt1ny]

These ideas are all copied out of the nature! The valves are how blood stops flowing backwards, and the suction upwards is how water is transported around a plant (transpiration)!

[gunny0488]

@engineerguyvideo maybe not just covering one concept, but 5 or 6 in one show.

[foodlovingpig]

I love ALL of your videos. So many of us have always drifted through life, especially us younger ones, seeing all of these things just work, not caring WHY they work, but simply expecting them to when we turn on something as common as a coffee maker. Recently I've especially become extremely interested in not just the fact that a common coffee maker works, but how it works, and the ingenuity and pure genius it took for the person or persons who designed it to get it to work so well. Thanks!

[TheClownCentral]

i like your videos and now i must go poop....cause i also learned if a eat cheese and follow it with a glass of bran juice it makes me fart logs.

[manedosantosbr]

I just love this channel...Congratulations !

[iToasterman]

@ChristopherTupper no...?

[ChristopherTupper]

@iToasterman eh, and i quote "Water explands in cold contracts in hot.", i think your confused again.