Ditting. Now with less screws! Check out the interior munching area of the latest Ditting grinder, the replacement for the 804 series.

How's this for something cool at the show?

Okay - you're looking at the "guts", at least on the cutting side, of the latest Ditting Grinder, and their replacement for the 804 series.

So look very closely. Notice anything different? Maybe something missing? Maybe something you're not quite sure is right about this picture? Let me help you out a bit.

There's no mounting screws on the burr stack! These burrs are held in place by rare earth magnets! Like, holy crap! And that's not all. Where the 804 series of Ditting grinders, including my own KF I use for cuppings, used pressed burrs to do their chopping, this one has milled burrs, and a lot of attention paid to the pattern and milling of these super hardened steel cutters.

So why is this all a big deal? Well, I'm not quite sure exactly - never before have I given much thought to the "dead zones" inside the burr discs where the screws are normally found - you can see this on your grinder - every flat burr grinder has burrs with 3 or 4 mounting screws set into the burr design. These are cutting "dead zones" where beans do not get cut. But they may be damaged.... or so the theory goes... when entering into these zones at high speeds.

These dead zones are, admittedly, designed in burrs to be at the widest point of entry for a coffee bean - the interior portion of the disc. As the bean gets ground up and chopped, it moves to the outer portion of the burrs, where it gets sliced finer, until it finally spits out into the vane system, which itself spits out the ground coffee through a chute or other delivery channel to your portafilter, press pot, or other receptacle. So one could argue these dead zones are moot - the bean's still almost whole when it gets into these areas, and isn't affected.

But we'll soon see. These new magnet-held burrs have full cutting surfaces. I wonder if it'll make a difference!

Ahh grinders. Gotta love it when companies at least start moving forward!