Nope. I use a little spray every time I grind. Also used to wet a fingertip and stir the beans with it for the same effect. I'm not grinding for espresso, but reducing static is nice for cleanliness and minimizing grind retention. Tons of coffee nerds have been using this technique for many years now, never heard of it causing grinder issues.
Yes I had some beans stuck in the grinder after trying the technique, I guess you could try to push them in or remove them somehow but it makes the whole process take more time and laborious to make sure you dont end up grinding old rancid beans the next time around
Business partner / coffee expert was huge into the online barista community and knew about this method for years. We did it with our commercial grinder and it worked great to reduce the amount of cleaning the grinder needed
The method in this paper is different than most existing RDT applications since achieving the best results requires much more water than anyone was previously suggesting. The heuristic that James Hoffman has espoused is 3-4 spritzes of water per 18g of coffee. Obviously this depends on the spritzer you use, but it’s much more water than people have used before so questions about that effect are valid. The paper addresses these concerns somewhat by measuring humidity in the grind chamber, and they found that it dropped to ambient on the order of a minute after grinding finished.