The Sniff Test
Published at : November 10, 2021
The Sniff Test
Our most recent batch of heaters arrived two weeks ago, and we noticed a plastic smell, that seemed to also permeate the steam. That got us very worried.
Every time we get a new batch of water heaters delivered, we do the sniff test. In the past, that's been running steam and several members of staff smelling the steam as it comes out of the machine. Our concern is that some cleaning product, solvent or other chemical used to make the heaters, might remain. We do run each machine for 2 hours before it leaves the factory, but the sniff test has always been part of our process.
In order to figure out where the smell was coming from, Decent Engineer Alfred did two things:
built a hot water recirculation device, sending water from each heater through a fine mesh filter, and turning each area into a aeroseoling device, to make smelling defects easier.
completely dismantled the heater into its parts, and heated each individually on a commercial warming plate.
We found the main culprit of the smell. Though the heaters are made for us, they have needed some reworking, and part of that has been us (at Decent HQ) putting high temperature shrink tubing around red-cable electrical connection. That's been fine, but with this batch, we asked the heater maker to do that for us, and... they didn't use the material we approved, instead swapping in a rubber that smells terrible when heated. That's the black tube on the right. So, we're going to cut them off the 6000 heaters we received, and put the correct shrink tube material on ourselves.
Alfred also found that a slight plastic smell comes from the insulating rubber ring right below the electric terminal, pictured above with the left arrow. Unfortunately, that's difficult to replace, and that has a very specific role, is glued in, and we would have trouble replacing it. On the positive side, we could only detect the smell when we put this part practically inside our nostrils.
Getting to a point where the Decent can get warm, without generating any smells at all, is my goal. Given, however, how many different materials are used (we worried about that cable tie, for instance, in the middle of the heater) it's an ongoing process, or of swapping out every part with another, until we slowly reduce all parts that give off smells when warm.
We do find that the warmth-caused smells drop off massively after a few hours of warm use, which has always been the case, and after 2h at the Decent factory, the machines have mostly lost their smell when warm. But... still, I do think that for a few days, after you get your Decent, you might notice a smell if you put your nose directly to one of the vents on the espresso machine. I'd love to achieve zero-smell, but perfection is hard to achieve. We'll keep working at it....
-john
Our most recent batch of heaters arrived two weeks ago, and we noticed a plastic smell, that seemed to also permeate the steam. That got us very worried.
Every time we get a new batch of water heaters delivered, we do the sniff test. In the past, that's been running steam and several members of staff smelling the steam as it comes out of the machine. Our concern is that some cleaning product, solvent or other chemical used to make the heaters, might remain. We do run each machine for 2 hours before it leaves the factory, but the sniff test has always been part of our process.
In order to figure out where the smell was coming from, Decent Engineer Alfred did two things:
built a hot water recirculation device, sending water from each heater through a fine mesh filter, and turning each area into a aeroseoling device, to make smelling defects easier.
completely dismantled the heater into its parts, and heated each individually on a commercial warming plate.
We found the main culprit of the smell. Though the heaters are made for us, they have needed some reworking, and part of that has been us (at Decent HQ) putting high temperature shrink tubing around red-cable electrical connection. That's been fine, but with this batch, we asked the heater maker to do that for us, and... they didn't use the material we approved, instead swapping in a rubber that smells terrible when heated. That's the black tube on the right. So, we're going to cut them off the 6000 heaters we received, and put the correct shrink tube material on ourselves.
Alfred also found that a slight plastic smell comes from the insulating rubber ring right below the electric terminal, pictured above with the left arrow. Unfortunately, that's difficult to replace, and that has a very specific role, is glued in, and we would have trouble replacing it. On the positive side, we could only detect the smell when we put this part practically inside our nostrils.
Getting to a point where the Decent can get warm, without generating any smells at all, is my goal. Given, however, how many different materials are used (we worried about that cable tie, for instance, in the middle of the heater) it's an ongoing process, or of swapping out every part with another, until we slowly reduce all parts that give off smells when warm.
We do find that the warmth-caused smells drop off massively after a few hours of warm use, which has always been the case, and after 2h at the Decent factory, the machines have mostly lost their smell when warm. But... still, I do think that for a few days, after you get your Decent, you might notice a smell if you put your nose directly to one of the vents on the espresso machine. I'd love to achieve zero-smell, but perfection is hard to achieve. We'll keep working at it....
-john
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