They could probably re-purpose it as a low cost breast xray machine.
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Apple uses customed machine parts for a reason (and would prefer not to), I have to imagine Juicero does it because Apple does.
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I recall reading that Apple used elaborate tooling because it made creating knockoffs that much more difficult.
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[quote=“anothernewbbaccount, post:15, topic:99776”]prototype steampunk juicero[/quote]Goodness, it sells itself. Just the thing to corner the market on the wifi-averse. Plus there’s no dirty electricity to interfere with the natural vibrations present in the juice pouches.
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I’m generally with you—It’s better to use a Vita-Mix blender to make a smoothie (including the fiber) than to just squeeze the juice out of something. (And better to consume mostly non-fruit produce.)
But for some situations, I can understand the appeal of juicing. Drinking the juice of 20 pounds of vegetables is a good option if you can’t eat 20 pounds of vegetables (for whatever reason—sensory issues, short on time, medical conditions…)
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I’m not an expert on handhelds or laptops, but that doesn’t sound accurate and the reasons I know of are due to the limits of physics (how to cool that density, how to keep it from breaking when it falls). And if their goal was to not have knock-offs then they thoroughly failed, I could walk through a market and buy each individual component - including physical machined parts and PCAs and PCBS - as well as a guide to assembling them myself.
This product uses machined parts as if they were forged parts, has an expensive useless industrial power supply, and is hilariously poorly engineered. And given my experience with (American) tech companies… well they like to do things because they read an article about apple doing it. However, Apple also owns hundreds if not thousands of CNC machines and optimizes their routing in person to build their products on an inconceivable scale - this company is treating an automated vice with tiny production quantities like a household object with design features you would see in industrialized restaurant equipment. It’s just all over the place and makes no sense whatsoever.
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I’m not sure what’s so ridiculously overengineered here. The PSU doesn’t look like anything special. It looks like your typical full bridge rectifier and multiplier setup (but @nixiebunny would know better than me). Yeah, it’s on a custom PCB but that doesn’t mean there’s anything particularly novel about it.
If I’m doing my calculation correctly, the juicer motor is about 1650W (or ~2HP) at peak load which is about what you’d get in a high-end blender or clothes iron. Sure, it’s powerful, but it’s nothing outrageous.
So what you end up with is a powerful off-the-shelf motor, and typical power supply, and a bunch of custom machined aluminum components.
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At least those people that bought one of these can feel a little better about spending $400 on it. If someone ever scoffs at it just open that baby up and let them stare in slack-jawed awe at the power that modern technology has delivered into our unworthy hands. It’s been 100 years since mankind learned how to split the atom; at long last we’ve learned the secret to splitting fruit. And in harvesting that elusive nectar of the gods we have truly become gods ourselves.
Oh. Sorry. Did you want the strawberry-banana or the mango-pineapple?
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There is also the Soviet aerospace design method of, “strap more engines on it until it actually flies”.
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The PSU is custom - which means entirely new certifications when there are a wide variety of off-the-shelf cheap PSUs that are available for (as you point out) typical applications. So it’s not that the power supply has too many components, it’s that it is literally redesigning the wheel. The motor is fine, but it has a complicated drive train that involves ball bearings and hundreds of man hours to machine. That brings us to the entirely aluminum structure - just look at those rounded machined corners!
It’s not that the product is over-designed so much as expensive, terribly built, unnecessary, and un-optomized in any way.
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I was unclearly trying to state that it’s not custom in the “novel” sense. I realize it’s custom in the “purpose built” sense.
While I can appreciate overbuilding as much as the next geek, it also bothers me when things are done just for the hell of it. I like my form with function, thank you very much.
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I misread your first line!
Don’t you have kiwi-kale 
One could just buy one of these. Some current and vintage ones are overbuilt to be very solid and will survive a nuclear blast.
Or one can buy a regular juicer or blender, Seriously, did this Juicero thing ever need to exist?
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Thanks. I just need to work out the finer details of a ‘steampunk app’ for it (even the wi-fi averse need remote control - I’m thinking 12 year old child in rags, and a loadhailer) and it will all be good to go.
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There’s a reason there are juice bars everywhere in China and they all use cheap blenders.
What is odd is that the whole “actually, you can just squish the bag” debacle suggests that Juicero deliberately chose a ‘produce pack’ design that requires almost no additional juicing at all. If you can squeeze it by hand, especially with vegetables rather than nearly overripe fruit, it has already been juiced pretty hard.
Is this level of engineering basically just tinsel? Is it a remnant from a time before they discovered that actual on-site juicing was hard?
This thing is massive overkill for handling the ‘juicebox with pulp’ that they are actually shipping; but if it were up to the task of actually juicing, why would they have gone with the rediculous juice box, rather that the actual juicing action they promised?
All I can imagine is “unpleasant discovery late in testing”; but that would suggest almost zero prototyping. How would this have come about?
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could you elaborate for us non- engineers?
