Machines Magazine

Espresso machine maintenance and working

November 22, 2016 By LEGO Turing Leave a Comment

espresso machine working Some of the so passionate coffee enthusiasts have never attempted to make their own cup of espresso and even less to take care of the maintenance of their espresso machines. Sadly, we are so used to be served the coffee at the café that when it comes to making our own cup of espresso we find it almost impossible. If you want to change that, you should also learn the working of an espresso machine and how to take good care of it.

The perfect cup of espresso is closely connected to the well-maintained espresso machine. The good condition of the machine would provide for its durability and quality performance. Every time you brew a cup of espresso, coffee grounds get stuck on the screen and the rubber gasket. You can clean them by running water through the empty portafilter after every shot, or, which is the best way, to use a grouphead brush to clean the group gasket.

With every brewed cup there are also oils, which accumulate with time and damage the taste of the espresso. To clean them you should backflush the machine – insert a blind basket into the portafilter, put a teaspoon of espresso machine detergent and run the pump for a few seconds. For better results, you should repeat the process a few times. To clean the spout you need to soak it for at least 12 hours in water and backflush detergent. The last two processes should be performed at least every two weeks.

The modern espresso machines are designed to require minimum maintenance, but they still need some in order to function properly. Every espresso machine owner should be able to change the group gasket and screen, flush the machine and descale it, as well as to fix some minor leaks. In order to do so, you would need to read carefully the manual and follow the steps described there.

Manufacturers and vendors recommend the espresso machines to be cleaned every day so that the residue could be removed. The residue damages the coffee quality, adding to it stale and burnt taste. Fortunately for you, some new models have a clean button, which automatically performs a clean cycle. Other brands are designed to have easily removable parts, which are then easy to wash or wipe. For great espresso machine options, you can check out The Edge’s picks for best espresso machines.

All these little maintenance and cleaning details make it necessary for you to consider carefully your choice of an espresso machine. An easy to clean and maintain machine would save you time while allowing you to make good quality coffee. Learn how to perform those simple tasks from the very beginning and perform them regularly, so that the residue is removed immediately.

How Rice Cooking Machines Work?

October 13, 2016 By LEGO Turing Leave a Comment

Rice cookers have become a must have these days. Not because they are on trend, but because of the busy lifestyle. Almost everyone wants a healthy diet and people have started to cook instead of ordering stuff from a restaurant. I mean, who can deny the fact that the homemade food is the best and that buying a small appliance such as a rice cooker can help you in having timely and healthy meals? No one!

If you happen to be someone who needs to buy a rice cooker or who has a rice cooker but is unsure whether to use it or not or just to have an understanding of the working of the rice cookers, then this is the right web page. We will tell you how rice cookers work, and how you can get the best rice cooker for the lowest price possible.

The rice cookers (modern day, induction ones) work on the very basic principle that is ‘boil the rice with double the amount of water and keep boiling till the water evaporates completely’. Though the modern technology and the natural instinct of the man have made cooking rice as well as its allied dishes both easy and sophisticated; the basic principle still remains the same.

Working of a rice cooker

To start with, you put in the rice and water and other ingredients such as salt etc. in the rice cooker and switch the button on. Then, the rice cooker will automatically cook the rice slowly and will beep you once the cooking is over. If you want to steam the veggies, soy chunks or meat in the rice cooker; then you can place them in the rice cooker steamer basket which generally comes with the cooker itself. If you want that the rice should stay warm for a particular time, or until you want it to be, then you can use the keep-warm feature. This feature allows you to have warm and tasty rice even after hours of cooking.

Another very common feature in the rice cookers is the Delayed Timer which allows you to plan the meals ahead of time. You have to put in the rice and water and feed the time by which you want the rice ready and the cooker will store it. Finally, as the time is reached, the cooker will beep and start cooking on its own. This makes cooking very easy and fun too. I mean, you can leave the rice ready to be cooked and get ready in the meantime. Apart from the normal white rice, the rice cookers will also allow you to cook brown rice, sushi rice, mixed rice, Spanish rice, GABA rice, GABA Brown and rice porridge etc.

Hence, cooking in a rice cooker is not only fun but really simple.

Oops.. My cooker beeped. Now I am going to have a delicious bowl of brown rice and steamed broccoli and you can start making your own.

A Turing Machine built using LEGO

September 27, 2016 By LEGO Turing Leave a Comment

In honor of the Alan Turing year 2012

To honor Alan Turing, we built a simple LEGO Turing Machine, to show everyone how simple a computer actually is. Primary goals were to make every operation as visible as possible and to make it using the automatic components of just a single LEGO MINDSTORMS NXT set, to make it easy to reproduce for those interested. The LEGO Turing Machine is part of the exhibition Turing’s Erfenis at CWI. Contact the builders at info@legoturingmachine.org.

Video

Short documentary by Andre Theelen of ecalpemos.nl

The Turing Machine

According to Wikipedia:

“A Turing machine is a device that manipulates symbols on a strip of tape according to a table of rules. Despite its simplicity, a Turing machine can be adapted to simulate the logic of any computer algorithm, and is particularly useful in explaining the functions of a CPU inside a computer.”

Unlike what the name suggests, it is not a physical machine but rather a theoretical model. It’s very simply, but describes the fundamental capabilities of practically all computers in use today. This means that if something can be done on a computer, it can also be done on a Turing machine. This makes it a great model for scientists to use to discover the limits of computers (e.g. complexity theory) and also to show to a broad audience how a computer fundamentally operates.

However, abstract models are just that, an abstraction of something. In order to really show how simple the fundamental model of a computer is, we have developed a physical implementation of the Turing machine, using LEGO Mindstorms NXT.

Hardware: LEGO

Our LEGO Turing machine uses a tape based on a classic interpretation of computer memory: switches. Additionally, it uses a light sensor to determine the value of a switch: if the switch is on, the sensor will see the black colour of the switch’s surface. But if it is turned off, the sensor will see the white colour of the LEGO beam, making it possible to distinguish between the states. Finally, a rotating beam mounted above the tape can flip the switch in both directions.

Alan Turing’s original model has an infinite tape, but LEGO had a slight problem supplying infinite bricks. So we chose to fix our tape size to 32 positions. Our LEGO Turing machine only uses automatic components that are part of a single LEGO Mindstorms NXT set: one NXT brick, three electric motors and one color sensor. The final model contains parts of the NXT 2.0 set as well as a bunch of parts (mostly large beams, but also a cork screw and a set of gear racks) from two other LEGO Technic sets. We believe a slightly smaller version can be constructed using only one Mindstorms NXT 2.0 set (8547-1) and the medium-sized Technic set Mobile Crane (8053-1), which are both currently available.

Instructions

Since we only have 32 positions, and the most basic alphabet, it would be difficult to encode our instructions on the same tape as the input. Another goal was to make the device tamper proof, such that it could be operated by visitors off the exhibition. Therefore, to avoid limiting the instruction size and to protect the running program, we chose to write the instructions to a file on the NXT brick and uses the simplest interpreter to run these instructions.

Basic instruction set

W(0|1) = write either 0 or 1 on the tape
M(F|B) = move the tape either forward or backward
J(_|0|1)[0-9]+ = read & jump (always, when 0, or when 1) to a row in the instruction table

The instructions running in the video can be found in this file on github. It implements a simple adder of two numbers.

Software: Rascal

The software we have developed to execute programs in a basic Turing machine language can be found on github Additionally, we have developed an interactive development environment (IDE) using the Rascal Meta-programming Language which is stored in our public subversion repository.