Amberale I really hope that the Argos/Vectis/???? succeed and put a bug up Olympia and LaPav’s fundaments and we get even more great little machines.
I agree that the small home lever market is not well served, more competition, better for consumers. That’s been proved in the large home lever market, where one company seemed to dominate too much for it to be healthy and there was little to no development and poor value for money.
Now we have quite a few larger home levers, decent competition and of course that has bought with it…innovation.
One of my hopes is to check the work that’s been done on the Vostock 1 group prototype, around the pressure release system, because releasing the pressure that way causes some issues (very wet pucks).
I first found this issue on the Nurri I tested, which at the time used a slightly different group and it was actually even worse. Now Antonio uses the same group manufacturer as the Vostok for his machine. Of course the problem would now be the same as the Vostok. Less wet, but I still felt could be much better.
When I used the Vostok machine extensively at Trieste, it was good, but I personally wasn’t happy with it and said to Paolo it should be revised before shipping. We discussed some solutions and Paolo, fortunately has the skills, ability and equipment to actually manufacture and engineer things. Apparently the solutions have worked very well and I have seen videos, but I want to see for myself. I will be out there on 17th January.
The development changes for the Vostok 1 group prototype are:
- Minor changes to drip tray cover, finger holes for removal, better centre pattern for any spout flow to go down cleanly
- Increase in drip tray size
- Changes to entire venting system mechanics and group mechanics (not software, that’s perfect!)
- Possible reposition of the front panel cut-out for the timer/control buttons for easier access
- Addition of rotary pump (model already identified, requires internal case mod) , the Trieste machine used a very expensive gear pump that was quieter, but not as quiet, or suitable as a rotary pump. Which also means the 24V transformer is no longer required. It was under the machines drip tray, so you couldn’t see it.
- Pressure transducers with a higher burst pressure.
- Internal changes to tidy up the system e.g. in the same way the Evo was made very tidy inside.
- Something very minor with the frame, but I forget
Paolo wants to get this all right before shipping units. I can’t talk about the solution for drier pucks when pressure release is used, because Paolo understandably wants to keep that one to himself.