On the other side of the country, the smoothie machine broke down. The ice generator needs to be replaced. The old one is completely covered in scale. The ice generator is a stainless steel cylinder with a screw inside and a cooling circuit outside—a copper tube with refrigerant. It’s the perfect design for a distillation apparatus. Inside the cylinder, there’s a screw. Water is fed in, which freezes, gets chopped into pieces by the screw, and then goes into the cocktail.
To work properly, we rolled the car out onto the street, slightly scaring the manager. He thought we were there to rob him.
So, we need to disassemble the casing, unsolder and remove the old cylinder, replace it with a new one, recharge the system with refrigerant, and start it up. The refrigerant we have is propane, so we can safely release it into the atmosphere.
We did everything, didn’t pressurize it, vacuumed it out, and are now pumping in propane. 60 grams went in, but the remaining 30 won’t go. We need to turn on the machine to let the compressor lower the pressure. We turn it on, but it doesn’t work. It says it won’t operate without water. And we’re outside. So we grab a hairdryer and heat up the propane tank. We managed to get the propane in, put everything back together, and rolled the machine back into the restaurant. We turn it on, and it says, “Wash me.”
It must be said that this is not a simple machine. Inside it is a real computer with Linux and a touchscreen. Consequently, it monitors itself, and the person seems like an appendage with hands, carrying out its commands.
Well, on the touchscreen, it says to proceed step by step and requires confirmation before moving on to the next washing step. There’s a “spider” with hoses included, which connects to the machine like the “Matrix” to Neo. All of this is fed from a bucket, sucking liquid from it, passing it through various channels in the system, and draining it into the sewer.
The buckets need to be changed. First, the detergent, then water, then the antiseptic, then wait a bit, and then water again. After that, air from the pneumatic line. By the way, the machine is connected to two types of water, electricity, air, and sewage.
The machine doesn’t allow the next step without waiting for the antiseptic to sit in the system. That’s a good idea. You could install a timer lock on the bathroom door so it won’t open until 5 minutes have passed. This way, the kids will brush their teeth instead of running out of the bathroom after a minute.
We washed them. We’re placing the bags with syrups into the trays. A separate task is to distinguish between caramel and mocha. There are no labels, and both are brown. We need to put them in the correct tray to avoid reprogramming the recipes later. The bags are vacuum-sealed, transparent, with an external valve and colored liquid inside.
Filled up. Testing. Trying it out. It’s working. Halfway like it never happened. And we still have to drive back.