Honestly, the quality and machining of the press itself is 5 stars. I just honestly think the whole release after pressing thing should have been considered. The puck sticks like glue to both metal compression surfaces and is very difficult to remove. I have coated both surfaces with various materials to try to alleviate this. Tape was a huge fail, saran wrap works but is difficult to trim to size (and who would want to do that every time?) so I leave it hanging out a bit which makes the pieces difficult to screw together. Press and Seal works pretty well. It sticks to the metal. pieces and allows the puck to release fairly easily and lasts about 3 pucks. You can also fairly easily trim it to size around the metal compression pieces so this has been the best solution I've come up with so far. Maybe if they offered (even as an option) a silicon disk or other "nonstick" material that would fit over the top of each of the metal compression discs that would be helpful. My goal is to locate a sheet of rigid silicon and trim a few discs to fit over the metal discs myself to see if that helps. Anything would be an improvement.