The perfect slice

While many modern toasters have numbered settings, there is very little consistency between brands and models. And while others might allow adjustment from light to dark, often the darkest setting might only just start to yield the desired burn. This is to the annoyance of all of us that have to learn the idiosyncrasies of our individual toasters. Perhaps you need to toast on full power and then again on the lightest setting to get it just right, or are you a maverick that keeps 'popping and looking' until it's perfect. The challenge So the challenge this month is therefore to come up with a way of judging the perfect slice of toast. Of course, 'perfect' is in the eye of the beholder so the toasting system must be able to be easily adjusted. The key here, however, is that any setting knob or button should yield exactly the same results. No matter the type of bread, its temperature, or its size, the toaster should be able sense the amount the bread that has been toasted and use that as its trigger to end the process. The challenge is really about integrating a mechanism for controlling the process, and those process engineers among you are at a distinct advantage. If it helps, the heating elements can be changed for something more efficient, or gradual, or controllable, but the toaster must remain competitive in price and any sensing system should not add much to the overall cost. Key, also, is the control interface. This is toast we are talking about, so any controls need to be simple, intuitive and fool proof. Light brown must mean light brown, and nothing in-between. But all this should not add complexity. You could opt to keep humans in the loop by having a clear toaster, so users can peer through and manually pop the toaster at the desired time. But, really, this is about modernising the age old toaster and moving away from the problematic timer. The solution we have in mind is simple in principle and exploits modern sensing technology to give all the desired improvements to overcome this trying breakfast bind at little extra cost. Our solution will be in the December issue of Eureka. In the meantime see what you can come up with. If you have a solution you would like to share with us, email it to tfryer@findlay.co.uk. -Solution- Solution to the November 2014 Coffee Time Challenge The solution to last month's challenge of how to toast the perfect slice of bread comes, perhaps unsurprisingly, from a student. While studying at the Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta, U.S, Basheer Tome came up with the idea after being tired of hovering around the toaster to ensure it came out just right. He wanted to move away from toasters that use timers as these are essentially blind to their contents. So he incorporated an array of colour sensors inside the toaster that continuously assess the colour of the bread to determine the amount it is toasted. By using the hue sensing system, frozen bread and darker breads can be added in exactly the same way so users just need to enter the desired colour and not worry about how long it is in the toaster. The sensors provide a constant feedback loop so toasting only stops once the sensors hit their mark. It is all controlled by a simple electronic 'hue' interface screen so users can simply enter the desired colour and be sure that there toast will emerge perfect every time.