Well, I'm up and running. The pipe bender I bought was rubbish for bending 3/8 copper ... so other than one new pipe, I've just re-installed the old (hard) pipe, and still have a couple of minor leaks from compression fittings which I think would be easily sorted by annealing the copper pipe ... but there is espresso to make ... so that can wait. I'm considering just lashing out and buying a dedicated 3/8 bender ... which might then allow me to make some new stainless steam arms too.
My inlet tap has a drip ... waiting for the viton o-ring kit to arrive before I tackle that. Nothing the occasional wipe with a cloth doesn't fix.
All the main things ... boiler gasket, element gasket, water inlet gasket, group flange gaskets are great. Not a drip.
Unfortunately the old float valve controlling water inlet hasn't worked, and I'm not pulling the boiler apart to find out why for now ..... so am controlling water level in boiler manually ... which I find is actually no big deal ... I only need to do it once a day at most.
The groups/levers are working beautifully. Pulling shots without the noise of a pump really is nice.
I've set the pressurestat at 1.2bar and can walk up and pull a shot without any 'flush'.
I've used the old toothpick trick to block some of the 5 holes in the steam tip to make steaming small milk volumes easier ... and am now getting good textured milk too.
Initial impressions are it is very forgiving ... shot consistency is high, with the exception of when the dose in the basket is too small.
I now need to turn my mind back to roasting so I've got some fresh beans to work with (its been ALDI beans to date), and see what this baby can really do.
Shout out to kofekitt for his assistance with the gasket material and other advice.
My inlet tap has a drip ... waiting for the viton o-ring kit to arrive before I tackle that. Nothing the occasional wipe with a cloth doesn't fix.
All the main things ... boiler gasket, element gasket, water inlet gasket, group flange gaskets are great. Not a drip.
Unfortunately the old float valve controlling water inlet hasn't worked, and I'm not pulling the boiler apart to find out why for now ..... so am controlling water level in boiler manually ... which I find is actually no big deal ... I only need to do it once a day at most.
The groups/levers are working beautifully. Pulling shots without the noise of a pump really is nice.
I've set the pressurestat at 1.2bar and can walk up and pull a shot without any 'flush'.
I've used the old toothpick trick to block some of the 5 holes in the steam tip to make steaming small milk volumes easier ... and am now getting good textured milk too.
Initial impressions are it is very forgiving ... shot consistency is high, with the exception of when the dose in the basket is too small.
I now need to turn my mind back to roasting so I've got some fresh beans to work with (its been ALDI beans to date), and see what this baby can really do.
Shout out to kofekitt for his assistance with the gasket material and other advice.



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