The Juicero taken to bits.

May 19, 2017 1:52 PM

BOLTR: Juicero, Cold Press Juicer for Rich Weirdos. (SLYT)
posted by Harpocrates (42 comments total)

That's a lot of cnc machined aluminum. You usually don't see this much mass in a consumer appliance.
posted by Popular Ethics at 2:06 PM on May 19, 2017 [2 favorites]

If you need more Juicero schadenfreude: The Mad King of Juice: Inside the Dysfunctional Origins of Juicero (via Gizmodo).
posted by JoeZydeco at 2:11 PM on May 19, 2017 [1 favorite]

Juicer for Rich Weirdos.

Juicer's a bit much, isn't it? Bag Squeezer for Rich Weirdos, maybe.
posted by leotrotsky at 2:15 PM on May 19, 2017 [5 favorites]

Similar teardown on the Juicero here.

This looks like an interesting YouTube channel. Thanks for posting!
posted by figurant at 2:18 PM on May 19, 2017

This looks like an interesting YouTube channel. Thanks for posting!

BOLTR is great. I love the machining in this thing. They really didn't spare any expense in there.
posted by mikelieman at 2:27 PM on May 19, 2017 [1 favorite]

AvE, Smarter Every Day, Walter Sorrells, Alec Steele, arboristBlairGlenn, ElectroBOOM, and Nerdwriter1 are my favorite youtube channels. Probably in that order.

#choochskookumelectrocitycorntactangrypixies
posted by djeo at 2:39 PM on May 19, 2017 [7 favorites]

Previously.
posted by Kabanos at 2:40 PM on May 19, 2017

I was just about to post this. While AvE is often pretty offensive and problematic on a variety of fronts, he's in rare form on this one.

I can't believe the amount of engineering that went into those pieces of crap just to squeeze prepulped bags of fruit mush.
posted by loquacious at 2:48 PM on May 19, 2017 [5 favorites]

> Previously.
In particular, the link from this comment:

Here’s Why Juicero’s Press is So Expensive hits some of the same themes. "tapered roller bearings! looks at the size of 'er... what the f yo? selling these at $399? you're losing your shirt. you are losing your fucking shirt!""

Juicebros shoulda listened to Ben Einstein's earlier warning No, You Can’t Manufacture That Like Apple Does... Startups can’t do things the same way big companies do
posted by ASCII Costanza head at 2:51 PM on May 19, 2017 [6 favorites]

Needs a NSFW. Electronics / machine porn.
posted by Splunge at 3:10 PM on May 19, 2017

"hand over teakettle"

So Juciero as a company has problems but I actually think the product is fine. I'd never buy one, but I wouldn't buy a Bentley or a high-end yacht either.
posted by GuyZero at 3:12 PM on May 19, 2017

Bag Squeezer for Rich Weirdos, maybe.

Everyone has to make a living.
posted by GenjiandProust at 3:12 PM on May 19, 2017 [9 favorites]

Man I've worked at too many product companies where quality was like the LAST possible priority. At this point I don't even care what your company does or if the business model will work, if you promise to let me pay attention to all the little details and make a high quality product. You know, for a change of pace.

Like every designer/engineer wants to make awesome things. But the business people think (rightly or wrongly) that all consumers are "no I'll take the thing that is two dollars cheaper but will break down after the very first use".

This is how you get the airline model* of giving the consumer exactly what they want... good and hard.

It makes me sad that by most accounts, their juice is actually really really good.

* a.k.a., the lowest possible fares by charging for things like using the toilet
posted by danny the boy at 3:19 PM on May 19, 2017

Obviously pointless and stupid, but dog my cats if that isn't one goddamned serious fucker of a bag squeezer, shit.
posted by Stonestock Relentless at 3:35 PM on May 19, 2017 [9 favorites]

I cherish his contributions to the public discourse. Shmoo is part of my regular vocabulary now.
posted by Jessica Savitch's Coke Spoon at 3:46 PM on May 19, 2017 [1 favorite]

"Capitalism is eating itself alive," and Juicero is exhibit A in the case for our steady descent into idiocracy.
posted by smrtsch at 3:55 PM on May 19, 2017 [2 favorites]

Bag Squeezer for Rich Weirdos, maybe.

Huh? What's Sean Hannity got to do with this?
posted by rokusan at 4:11 PM on May 19, 2017 [9 favorites]

But the business people think (rightly or wrongly) that all consumers are "no I'll take the thing that is two dollars cheaper but will break down after the very first use".

Sadly, all evidence suggests they're thinking is accurate.

Be the change you want in the world, consumers.
posted by rokusan at 4:12 PM on May 19, 2017

Holy crap this guy is super smart and engaging. Watched that whole thing. Thanks. Subscribed!
posted by lazaruslong at 4:22 PM on May 19, 2017 [1 favorite]

That Gizmodo article is very informative, but let's not forget who the actual "Mad King of Juice" was.


Joseph Ernest II of Saxe-Hildburghausen, who famously insisted on taking all his meals in juice form, built a giant plate-glass enclosed juicery on the palace grounds, and shat himself inside-out in 1856.
posted by TheWhiteSkull at 4:29 PM on May 19, 2017 [11 favorites]

Fatal flaw in the design is that it presses the entire bag flat like closing the cover of a book. This requires enormous force to apply that pressure simultaneously over the entire surface of the bag, sort of like a metal forming machine press. It would be much easier and require much less force to apply that pressure to a small part of the bag at one time. Using a squeezing roller might be one approach.

This idea of flattening the whole bag all at once is just nuts and requires the very expensive, heavy duty, custom machined components in the juicer.

They advertise 4 tons of force but that is a meaningless statistic because it depends on the surface area that force is distributed across. By squeezing the entire bag at once, they require that enormous force. By squeezing just part of the bag at a time, they could have gotten the same results with much less total force.
posted by JackFlash at 4:56 PM on May 19, 2017 [4 favorites]

whoa. this guy is like, aggressively Canadian.
posted by indubitable at 5:11 PM on May 19, 2017 [6 favorites]

I'm Canadian and I found it really "put on" and too irritating to sit through.
posted by bonobothegreat at 6:10 PM on May 19, 2017 [2 favorites]

And he asked him, saying, "Art thou the king of Juice?". And he answered "Thou sayest it."

AvE is a great channel, if about twenty years behind the times in certain ways. I can only use some of his phraseology in polite company.
posted by Devonian at 6:19 PM on May 19, 2017 [2 favorites]

DATELINE 2002
YOUR HOUSE

(you feel a scintillating chill from behind, cold light shining on your back. You turn around to see the back wall of your bedroom wobble, distort, grow translucent. The blood rushes in your ears. A human face, haggard, scarred, pushes through the thready fabric of your wall, and a body follows behind. You smell wet metal, burnt oil. You nearly faint when you realize the visitor's face is your own, uncannily aged. The visitor's​ mouth creaks open.)

V: in the future, the entire aesthetic and humor of Tim Allen's Tool Time will be reproduced via unconscious and emergent process, by an unseen Canadian and a cheap video camera. This is the closest humanity ever comes to resolving the "infinite monkeys" concept in the affirmative.

(The visitor coughs once, closes their eyes, and steps backward, disappearing back into the still-wobbling wall of your room. Another flash of freezing light, a blast of smoke, and the wall solidifies. You stare, wondering what to do now. On the floor you notice a charred slip of paper, the size of a cookie's fortune. You unfold it, hold it up to your eyes.)

PAPER: Also Donald Trump gets elected president
posted by penduluum at 6:26 PM on May 19, 2017 [7 favorites]

A complete technical breakdown of how the Juicero works.
posted by blue_beetle at 7:03 PM on May 19, 2017 [1 favorite]

I'm Canadian and I found it really "put on" and too irritating to sit through.

I was brought up in the right area in the right demographic where that is absolutely not put on.
posted by Bovine Love at 7:40 PM on May 19, 2017 [4 favorites]

Joseph Ernest II of Saxe-Hildburghausen
I will not google this. I am just going to aggressively believe that it is real.
posted by phooky at 7:55 PM on May 19, 2017 [3 favorites]

AvE, Smarter Every Day, Walter Sorrells, Alec Steele, arboristBlairGlenn, ElectroBOOM, and Nerdwriter1 are my favorite youtube channels. Probably in that order.


Check out Techmoan. An aggressively pleasant Englishman (very pleasant voice, IMO, with an easy to decipher accent to boot) analyzes some amazing old tech (mostly, sometimes new) while being quite informative, charming, and VERY SFW.

Also, sometimes puppets.

https://www.youtube.com/user/Techmoan
posted by Samizdata at 8:06 PM on May 19, 2017 [1 favorite]

An extremely expensive looking and minimalist juice bar has opened up in my neighbourhood, and they have committed to the idea of juice puns, hard. In precision cut vinyl are emblazoned "LETS HANG LIKE WE JUICE TO" and "JUICE THE TWO OF US", which reliably just enrage me every time I see them. They are perfectly adequate juice puns, and had they been scrawled once or twice in chalk on a sandwich board outside, I would have had no problem with them and perhaps even found them charming, but once you've committed to cutting out your 5/10 puns with a laser and mounting them on glass like some sort of fruit mad Ozymandias my sympathy is lost.

I don't know what it is about juice that apparently compels people to over-commit to a terrible idea. Perhaps it is because juice, in itself, is sort of an over-committal to the idea of just eating some fucking fruit
posted by Jon Mitchell at 11:29 PM on May 19, 2017 [16 favorites]

So Juciero as a company has problems but I actually think the product is fine. I'd never buy one, but I wouldn't buy a Bentley or a high-end yacht either.

If Bentley made their cars run only on custom Bentley-branded gasoline, would you think the product was fine?
posted by Etrigan at 2:46 AM on May 20, 2017 [1 favorite]

Juicero...So is this Lucille Austero's modern take on the Corn-Baller™?
posted by Captain l'escalier at 6:49 AM on May 20, 2017 [3 favorites]

Check out Techmoan. An aggressively pleasant Englishman (very pleasant voice, IMO, with an easy to decipher accent to boot) analyzes some amazing old tech (mostly, sometimes new) while being quite informative, charming, and VERY SFW.

I'd also recommend BigClive.
posted by sfred at 1:14 PM on May 20, 2017

whoa. this guy is like, aggressively Canadian.

Danger Will Robinson! Oxymoron detected!
posted by jonp72 at 1:31 PM on May 20, 2017

If I were a venture capitalist, I'd be investing in these product design companies that manufacture these gewgaws used by megalomaniac Silicon Valley CEOs to separate other VC guys from their money. The markup must be amazing!
posted by jonp72 at 1:33 PM on May 20, 2017 [1 favorite]

I'm glad you folks are pointing out how Canadian he sounds. I was just thinking, "gee, this sounds a lot like a guy I know" and it turns out he probably sounds a lot like everyone I know.
posted by Naib at 7:24 PM on May 20, 2017

He sounds exactly like Captain Ron, if Captain Ron were kind of a dick. (I enjoyed this immensely, and he sounds pretty much completely like all the old men I know who work on boats, in all the good and bad ways.)
posted by kalimac at 8:33 PM on May 20, 2017

So, what this video and thread indicate to me, is that when we're living in the wasteland, scavenging Juiceros will be like hitting a pocket of gold, thanks to all of the pricey tech components inside (including some literal gold)?
posted by codacorolla at 6:38 AM on May 21, 2017 [1 favorite]

Like when I'm playing Fallout 4 and find a lab filled with microscopes. Aluminum, screws, and microchips? Yes please!
posted by codacorolla at 6:42 AM on May 21, 2017 [2 favorites]

That 330vdc supply is a standard voltage doubler front end. Switching power supplies normally use either one of these or a Power Factor Correction front end. The doubling part is a couple of diodes and capacitors, and doesn't have anything to do with the chokes. The electronics seem standard other than the encapsulated power supply brick they stuck on there. It's the mechanical part where they went nuts.
posted by netowl at 8:09 AM on May 21, 2017

This is how you get the airline model* of giving the consumer exactly what they want... good and hard.

I'm not sure that explains the debacle of the Juicero. You could do focus groups for years, but nobody's going be begging for roller bearings or a spy camera attached to their juicer. The overengineered design features are there because they're for the purpose of impressing the VC funders. No actual ordinary consumer wants the "bells and whistles" that impress the VC folks. Nobody who thinks about it for 2 seconds is going to think, "Yes, please make me pay over $250 for unnecessary components so that my juicer can spy on me." If nothing else, the failure of the Juicero is just the same old tale of overengineered gewgaws that give the consumer nothing that they want or need.
posted by jonp72 at 9:09 PM on May 21, 2017

If Bentley made their cars run only on custom Bentley-branded gasoline, would you think the product was fine?

Sure. There's still dozens of alternatives for getting juice, be it fresh or not. You can still go buy a regular juicer. But if you want to buy a Juicero and not deal with the mess and pay $8 a glass or whatever, sure, go nuts. People who own hobby aircraft have to buy avgas which isn't proprietary but there's not a heck of a lot of competition bringing down prices.

My basic position is that rich people should feel free to burn their money as fast as they want in whatever farcical manner they enjoy.
posted by GuyZero at 9:20 PM on May 21, 2017 [1 favorite]