We're always looking for ways to improve and automate our manufacturing.
We built our winnower at HackPrinceton based on designs from Chocolate AlchemyTM. It uses a Champion Juicer (see below) to coarsely grind whole roasted beans before sucking off the shells with a vacuum. This is a major improvement over our previous method, which involved cracking the beans with a rolling pin before attempting to blow off the shells with a hair dryer. Our experiments indicate that the automatic winnower makes winnowing roughly 40 times faster.
The Juicer is our all-around workhorse. We began using it to grind the beans, and we've since found another use for it in our winnower.
After grinding, we use a melanger to further refine our chocolate and ensure the smoothest texture.