How MAKE Engineering Helped Shape the Ninja Luxe Café Espresso Machine
Here at MAKE Engineering, we thrive on the challenge of translating ambitious product visions into tangible realities.
When SharkNinja approached MAKE Engineering with the idea for what would become the Ninja Luxe Espresso Machine, the brief was both simple and ambitious: How can we leverage technology to create a home espresso system that can give anyone a barista-level drink?
Our role was to develop the early design concepts and build verification prototypes to prove out the critical technologies. Below is a behind-the-scenes look at how those innovations came together.
Load Cell Integration
Consistency starts with the coffee dose. MAKE Engineering started from the basics and developed a way to integrate a load cell directly beneath the portafilter cradle, enabling the machine to weigh grounds in real time as they drop from the conical burr grinder.
In our prototypes, we validated that this system could deliver repeatable dosing across different bean types, roast levels, and grind settings. It was a small piece of engineering that had a big impact: ensuring users always start with a precise dose, without ever needing a separate scale.
Automating Espresso Prep – Grind iQ
Once you know the dose weight, we could design a feedback system that guides users without overwhelming them. The result was the Grind iQ concept, where software and hardware works together to “learn” from early extractions and nudge the user toward the right grind size.
MAKE Engineering built early verification rigs to prove that Grind iQ could reliably correlate grind size, flow rates and extraction. We built a computational model which could then fit known data points from the user and predict the best settings to use, without the user having to do anything.
This feature transformed the machine from a tool into a coach, bridging the gap between beginner and barista.
Milk Made Simple: Automatic Frothing
Prop micro foam is the dividing line between a coffee machine and a café experience. We collaborated on the design of a hands-free frothing system that offered four distinct modes. We paid special attention to aeration profiles across different milks, ensuring the system could handle both dairy and the ever more popular plant-based alternatives.
To top it off, we developed an auto-purge detection, reducing steam wands becoming blocked over time, a key user issue!
User Touch points
While much of our work focused on core technologies, we never lost sight of the user experience (UX). Touch points were constantly challenged and iterated on. We created countless prototypes and ran many user trials, right from the start of the project, ensuring that the product wouldn’t just perform well—it would feel great to use every day.
From Vision to Reality
Our early design and prototyping work on this project laid the foundation for a product that is now delighting coffee lovers around the world and it is a real pleasure to see all the positive reviews (our favourite is from James Hoffman).
At MAKE Engineering, that’s what excites us most – helping brew bold ideas into reality.