Making A Tamper
Making a tamper requires expensive, precision equipment and specialist skills. We use two different processes for making our coffee tampers. The majority of the repetitive bulk machining is performed on a high-volume computer-controlled CNC lathe. This allows us to achieve the fundamental shape of the tamper without incurring excessive manual labour costs, and given this step is exactly the same in every case there's good reason to do it that way. From that point we get directly involved in the process ourselves, and customise the tamper base to be exactly the right size for your machine, ensuring you get exactly the right product custom-made for your machine.
However, in some cases we will manufacture a tamper base completely from raw materials. The photos below track this process of a piece of steel becoming a coffee tamper!
The main piece of equipment used to make the tampers is called a lathe. It allows the biscuit of stainless steel to be cut and shaped to the right size for the tamper.
This particular unit is an English model from the 1970's, but despite its apparent age, well-built machines such as this one last for many many years. This one is still in very good mechanical condition; the company that made the lathe is still in operation today and many spare parts are still available. It has a geared head, integrated cooling and lubrication system, and has a maximum spindle speed of 2500rpm. Needless to say, many tampers were made before its purchase cost was recovered!
This is how every tamper starts its life - a length of round solid stainless steel bar. This particular length weighed about 20kg!
Firstly, the bar has to be 'parted' to the right length for a tamper base.
Then the machining starts, with a steady flow of coolant to ensure the cutting tools don't overheat.
Once the top cut is made, the outer chamfers are cut to the correct angle
As you can see, despite the flow of coolant to keep temperatures down, a significant amount of heat is still generated during machining. This photo shows steam from evaporated coolant rising from the tamper.
Then the central hole is drilled and tapped, which will be used to attach the handle.
Now the tamper is turned around 180° so the base can be cut square. The final cut as shown here normally removes about 0.05mm of steel, which is approximately the thickness of a piece of human hair. This operation is performed at higher speed than every other operation to ensure a cut of this depth does not tear as could happen at slower speeds.
The final cut on the outside to take it to exactly the right size for the target filter basket.
... and cutting the TrueTamp rings. Again, the position of these relative to the bottom of the tamper is crucial, and is identical across every tamper to allow comparison of tamping depths with other owners and colleagues.
Checking the tamper for size in the filter basket...
... and the finished tamper, washed, cleaned, measured and assembled, ready to be shipped to its new owner!
