Gaggiuino Screen Housing

This project combined three interests of mine: coffee, CNC machining, and product design.

My espresso machine runs a Gaggiuino, an open-source upgrade that adds pressure profiling, temperature control, and pump control to the machine. While the electronics and software work well, I was never happy with the standard 3D-printed display housing supplied with the project. It looked out of place on an otherwise metal machine, lacked rigidity when using the touchscreen, and felt more like a prototype than a finished product.

My goal was to design a display enclosure for the existing Gaggiuino touchscreen that felt like it belonged on the machine from the factory. The display itself is an ESP32_8048S043 touchscreen module, and I wanted the enclosure to be rigid enough to withstand repeated touchscreen inputs while maintaining a clean look on my kitchen countertop.

For inspiration, I looked at Apple's iPad design. The smooth transitions, fillets, bead-blasted aluminum finish, and seamless appearance all influenced the project. I wanted the screen to appear as if it had always been part of the machine, with no visible fasteners or obvious assembly features from the user's perspective.

After several hours in SolidWorks, I settled on a two-piece design consisting of a machined aluminum housing and a laser-cut sheet metal mounting bracket. The housing would support the display while the bracket would interface with the espresso machine itself.

There were a handful of design challenges to work through. The enclosure needed to be as thin as possible while avoiding electrical shorts between the ESP32 board and the conductive aluminum housing. Internal clearances had to account for component heights and connector locations while still maintaining a slim profile. Since the housing was machined from aluminum, I also had to make sure it wouldn't interfere with the ESP32's Wi-Fi signal, so I designed a dedicated opening for the onboard antenna.

I also spent quite a bit of time dialing in tolerances. The rear mounting panel slides into the housing, and I wanted the fit to feel precise without requiring any force during assembly. Since I would ultimately be machining the parts myself, I was able to design around manufacturing capabilities that I knew I could actually achieve.

Once I landed on a design, I had the sheet metal bracket cut by SendCutSend and sourced all hardware through McMaster. The housing itself was machined on a Datron Neo CNC mill available to me.

The first prototype came out beautifully from a machining standpoint, but it quickly exposed several mistakes on my end. The display board fit thigher than intended due to insufficient clearances in certain areas, and several I/O features needed additional relief. I had also made the mistake of using multiple fastener sizes throughout the assembly, which made assembly more complicated than it needed to be.

Those lessons drove the second revision. For Version 2, I increased clearances around the display board, opened up reliefs for connectors and I/O features, and standardized all hardware to M3 fasteners. The result was a design that assembled more cleanly and used fewer unique parts.

The finished enclosure mounted solidly to the machine, felt rigid during touchscreen operation, and hit the clean aesthetic I was looking for. After machining, I bead blasted the housing to produce that uniform matte finish that Apple does so well.

As a bonus, another member of the coffee community ended up buying one of the housings. That was a pretty cool validation that the design solved a problem for someone besides myself. What started as a personal project turned into a small production run.