We have some exciting news to share! The very first prototypes of our 100% solid aluminum WDT Tool have made its way to our doorstep.
If you're familiar with our Knurled Style 3D Printed WDT Tool, you'll notice they have the same look. Those 3D printed WDT Tools exhibit a look that's very close to metal, they don't feel or weigh the same as metal. In the image below: 100% CNCed aluminum on the left, and 3D printed on the right with shiny PLA filament.
One of our key goals for these aluminum WDT Tools is for it to elevate your coffee nook like never before. They'll be able to match your other accessories in terms of look, feel and ruggedness. If your portafilter and tampers feel very hefty and solid, why shouldn't the WDT Tool also? Expect these WDT Tools to weigh in around 120g.
Here's a quick tour of some of the design features:
After long-term usage and discussions with users, we find the most often used configuration for our Knurled Style 3D Printed WDT Tool is the outside pentagon layout + the center. This provides the widest coverage and a faster WDT action when combing through the coffee grounds in your portafilter.
The new aluminum version will feature only one layout. To keep things simple, we'll encourage you to occupy all the holes at all times with needles. Just like before, the optimal distance between the needles is carefully considered so that the needles will likely comb through coffee grounds rather than trap and carry around a bunch of it while you're swirling away, effectively leading to a more uniform de-clumping and distribution.
In this closeup above you'll also notice the knurling (true knurling this time 😉) looks a bit sharp. Thankfully it doesn't actually feel sharp in the hand, but rest assured we'll be adjusting that to be smoother before release.
The WDT Tools start from solid aluminum blocks that have undergone precise CNC lathe milling to their final forms and then anodized for protection and aesthetics. The anodization will initially come in two styles: clear and black as you can see below.
For testing purposes we opted to go with our old UT logo from UTYPEDESIGN, as seen above. We wanted to see how a larger, bolder logo might look. We also tested wrapping around our wordmark "INTOVERT" around the holder base.
Unfortunately, due to a mistake with the production process with the black WDT Tool, these logos came out in aluminum colour rather than black on black. We're hoping the final version to have a very subtle and "stealth" logo.
We really hope you're as excited as us for these WDT Tools to become a reality! We are working on some final refinements and hope to have a first batch ready in the coming months.
Just keep in mind that these are still prototypes, and anything about the tools are subject to change!
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Signing off for now and leaving you with one last image.
- Andrew
