Andreas Samson

The Bodum Salt & Pepper Grinder.

We took the grinder apart and found out that the friction clutch is made out of plastic. Plastic is not a very durable material to use with the friction caused from grinding. Basically instead of grinding salt and pepper you are grinding the plastic. Out team member had gone to the store to get a new one four times. That's expensive for Bodum and the store. Time consuming for the team member and bad for the environment.

Picture taken from the other side.

Solid Works CAD-drawing.

Closer view of the broken part.

We found the material used for the grinder is ABS. ABS is also used for legos. We concluded after reading specs about ABS that the material is strong enough but it's the design of the part that makes it weak.

Detailed blue print.

We found a simple solution to the problem. Simply changing the design to a part causing less internal friction will mean that the plastic will not change its shape. We have later found out that in newer models of the Bodum grinders, that this part has been changed to exactly our suggestion.