ACS Factory Tour October 2022 - Part of my Naples holiday

Our forum: www.tapatalk.c...
Main review website: coffeeequipmen...
ACS can be found at acs-espresso.com or www.elcor.it
I recently took a holiday and stayed with my friend Paolo Cortese (ACS). I suppose my holidays are not normal holidays, but often all to do with coffee. I thought I would give you a flavour of ACS, a small artisan manufacturer in the heart of Naples. They make traditional and not so traditional espresso machines. Paolo is an innovator in the world of espresso and is always inventing and creating. He has a passion for the business that is unmatched by most other companies.
They create almost everything and will soon have the ability to 100% fabricate the cases on site. I expect then we will see a variety of shapes and designs unlike anything we have seen before. Coupled with a laser welder an extremely neat finish should be obtained. The best way I can describe it is they "build" machines, not just assemble them.
I spent a lot of time in the factory discussing designs and making tests. It helped me understand the business and difficulties much better. It was an interesting insight into how your espresso machines are made. Most of them have the name of a specific customer, as often machines are customised.
Later in the month we went to Triestespresso exhibition and I am preparing that video at the moment.

[@eprohoda]

good morning!Omg~really amazing veiw~farewell.

[@GrayDJames]

Goodness me, I'd not like to have to do a stock take at that place. I dread to think how much money they must have tied up in stock; to say nothing of the apparent disorder! Interesting film though and the machines (from your other films) look impressive.

[@DaveCorbey]

They are impressive machines, but manufactured in smaller numbers, not just assembled. ACS will soon make their cases 100%, instead of assembling, welding and polishing pre made parts to specification from a steel manufacturer. Plus the laser welding coming soon. There is an order to the disorder, of course if production increases, they would use the money to invest in the facilities required to support it. The new machinery coming is a significant expense.

[@GrayDJames]

@@DaveCorbey Thanks for taking the trouble to reply. It is really interesting. Thanks.

[@tjsullivan4793]

On the one hand I am happy for this small family company and its success but as I research expensive lever machines it does concern me of this manufacturing set up. It seems a little chaotic and a bit to casual looking with their building process almost like their building these machines as a hobby. How many quality control and testing checks is an evo leva going thru before being shipped to customer? This comment is NOT intended as mean spirited but I don't know. When you watch a video on La Marzoco machines being built(yes I understand La Marzoco is a much larger company producing very high end machines) or for that matter ECM machines being built. Although La Marzocos are very very expensive an evo leva is also expensive. It just concerns mean of quality control in this set up. Seems they need more workers in this shop.

[@DaveCorbey]

I only showed a few of the workers, but it's no hobby, they really do a lot more manufacture, than just assembly and unlike some companies, make the machines they sell. The Evo is a good machine and they use high quality parts. It's not a huge company though.

[@vanyiszabi]

I have a Vesuvius v2 Inox ...it's a great machine ...but it looks, that the factory is not a hight tech place 😅

[@DaveCorbey]

It's a working factory, producing some very advanced but traditional machines. It's what artisan manufacturing looks like.