My name is Nick Mosher, and I'm a (soon to be) engineer designing a high-quality electric smoker along with a team of people with skills in precision machining, metal crafting, and artistic design. Our design will allow independent control of heat, smoke, and moisture, and will offer automated settings for the beginner (or those who would rather be having fun with family and friends) for popular classics such as Baby-Backs, Shoulder, Brisket, Chicken Thighs, Salmon, Almonds, etc. Of course full manual / custom control will only be a button push away for those who want to experiment (or compete with regular expected results!).
My goal here is to get input from people to help incorporate design elements they would like to see be part of this product which will hopefully be leaps and bounds ahead of anything else on the market outside of commercial-grade units used by major food producers (which cost tens of thousands of dollars). The idea is to make a reliable, attractive, and aesthetically pleasing smoker that has the same high-end controls, instrumentation, and capabilities on a smaller scale with a beautiful interface. Think Apple Computers meets Applewood (with plenty of insulated Stainless Steel)...
We're passionate about good food and design, and are heading into this with the mindset that we would be more than happy to invest this time and energy even if the only result is a fantastic smoker in our own homes. All of the design and labor is currently being done on our own time, and by starting at square one with most of the components we hope to keep the cost down while simultaneously offering unparalleled quality and capability. Initial estimates peg the price somewhere in the range of $1000 (+/- a few hundred depending on the full feature set and materials used). This is more than the cheaply constructed poorly designed (and feature barren) $500 mass-market units, but less than many custom BBQ's that hit $2000, $3000, or more.
So no MIG welded steel drums painted black, no generic thermocouple based temperature controllers adapted to chassis' with magnets and taped wires - you get the idea.
Please chime in with (positive or negative) ideas, suggestions, critical opinions, etc. We value what you have to say, and perhaps some of you might be asked to jump in on testing with a pre-paid CC for grub when we reach that phase. I'll be discussing most things related to the design process (along with pictures), but might hold back on a few details for obvious reasons (such as the software being run on the micro-controllers, or manufacturing techniques our machinist comes up with for producing certain chassis components). We're all people with full-time jobs, so the design cycle is expected to take a year or so.
More to come!
- Nick
My goal here is to get input from people to help incorporate design elements they would like to see be part of this product which will hopefully be leaps and bounds ahead of anything else on the market outside of commercial-grade units used by major food producers (which cost tens of thousands of dollars). The idea is to make a reliable, attractive, and aesthetically pleasing smoker that has the same high-end controls, instrumentation, and capabilities on a smaller scale with a beautiful interface. Think Apple Computers meets Applewood (with plenty of insulated Stainless Steel)...
We're passionate about good food and design, and are heading into this with the mindset that we would be more than happy to invest this time and energy even if the only result is a fantastic smoker in our own homes. All of the design and labor is currently being done on our own time, and by starting at square one with most of the components we hope to keep the cost down while simultaneously offering unparalleled quality and capability. Initial estimates peg the price somewhere in the range of $1000 (+/- a few hundred depending on the full feature set and materials used). This is more than the cheaply constructed poorly designed (and feature barren) $500 mass-market units, but less than many custom BBQ's that hit $2000, $3000, or more.
So no MIG welded steel drums painted black, no generic thermocouple based temperature controllers adapted to chassis' with magnets and taped wires - you get the idea.
Please chime in with (positive or negative) ideas, suggestions, critical opinions, etc. We value what you have to say, and perhaps some of you might be asked to jump in on testing with a pre-paid CC for grub when we reach that phase. I'll be discussing most things related to the design process (along with pictures), but might hold back on a few details for obvious reasons (such as the software being run on the micro-controllers, or manufacturing techniques our machinist comes up with for producing certain chassis components). We're all people with full-time jobs, so the design cycle is expected to take a year or so.
More to come!
- Nick
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