Can You Gimme a Little Slack?

By Kaleb Leach

We are excited to announce the winner of the First CTG Slack contest. The goal of the contest was to show off your favorite modification. Will La Hara and team from Legacy coffee Tech out of Staten Island, NY delivered the first-place winner with a 2007 Linea restoration. Legacy updated the La Marzocco Linea 2EE with new PID temp control, added ACE Dotshot timers and on top of a detailed refurbishment added a sweet avocado powder coat. Will and team take the 1st place trophy. Way to go!

Second place went to David Miller at Latte911 out of Ontario, Canada for his custom electroplating of a Modbar AV I. This type of work is complicated to land consistently and as David said because the Modbar is made of two different materials matching the electroplating becomes even more complicated. By the looks of it, David nailed it. He was able to match two groups and a steam tower in antique brass. Looking Good David, and thanks for the submission.

Both Will and David are dedicated coffee technicians that are detail oriented and have taken their craft to the next level.  They are masters in the field but know that every day is an opportunity to learn something new or share what they have learned over the years.  Thanks to both of you for putting your work out there for the world and for being active members of the CTG.  Also, I would like to point out that both David and Will donated there winnings back to the CTG to help pay for a new member. Big thanks for the support!

Thanks to everyone that participated in the contest and Head on over to CTG Slack #customstuff channel to see the other submissions. 

The CTG slack group has been instrumental in connecting technicians on a global level. Slack has proven to be an invaluable tool to pass on learnings and connect our industry in a way that hasn’t been done before. Sharing processes and best practices while networking our niche business is the goal and so far, the Slack group has been very successful in this space.  

We launched our first content contest in June with the hopes of engaging our members to show off the creative side of custom modifications techs attempt and to highlight situations in the field when you have to think on your feet to make a repair happen. The response was good, and we had fun doing it.  It’s always great to see the work we do that isn’t the day to day dirty group screen and petrified portafilter gasket that consumes most of our days and pays the bills.

With that said I am excited to announce our next Slack contest! 

Best Homemade Tool!

We’ve all been there. You need a tool for a very specific job and the local hardware store isn’t going to have the thing you need. Maybe you modified a tool you already had to do the job at hand, or you made something from scratch.  The last shop I worked at was full of modified tools made for very specific jobs and the best thing was making the job easier when the new tool worked. Although it was a little frustrating when the tool that you were looking for got modified for another job, but it also meant we got to do some new tool shopping.

We want to see how you have made your job easier or improved time on a job through making your own tools and we hope that you will participate. This will give everyone on the group a chance to grow as well as a chance to show off your personal innovation. Keep an eye on the #general channel on slack for the announcement because we will be starting this contest soon. There will be prizes for first and second place and we will be looking for your submission.

Thanks to everyone participating in the CTG culture their cant be good coffee without you.