Rancillio Miss Lucy Mods

[randyrob]

Don't forget with no flow you should set to ~9.5-10 as the pressure will drop with flow.

Not super critical as you are in the ballpark.

Cheers

Ah hmm OK, another thing to investigate

[artman]

Don't forget with no flow you should set to ~9.5-10 as the pressure will drop with flow.

Not super critical as you are in the ballpark.

Cheers

[randyrob]

Ah good to know!

I got there in the end added a decent amount of thread tape and kept tightening it up unti it hit 9 Bar.

[koshari]

I got the notch on the portafilter brazed & cleaned up by a very nice forum member

Just tested mine again with 2 washers and it reads 155 PSI which is 10.68 bar, I'm going to try some thread tape around the washers to see if that will give it a bit less pressure.

Rob.

i suspect my washers were a tad thicker than yours,
quick tip, go off the kPa scale, 100kPa is very close to 1 bar with 10 meters of H2O head pretty much one atmosphere :-)

[randyrob]

yes closed system test as well, same setup as yours except i had a little bit of tube between elbow and gauge fitting. bit of a pain using the Lucy portafilter with the notch, had to cut a bit of insertion rubber to plug the notch, next time i will use my newer silvia portafilter without the notch.

Originally i tried 2 copper washers and a fibre washer between then and it was way to low under 7 bar, removing the fibre washer bade it about 8.5 bar.

the copper washers i used were a little convex so i flattened them down and dressed them with emery and then i hit 9 bar so it was a bit of trial and error, i did have a bit of scale in the OPV which possibly could have effected the seating of the valve as well.

but all good now, will be interesting to see what my silvia V1 down at the beach house is set to.

I got the notch on the portafilter brazed & cleaned up by a very nice forum member

Just tested mine again with 2 washers and it reads 155 PSI which is 10.68 bar, I'm going to try some thread tape around the washers to see if that will give it a bit less pressure.

Rob.

[koshari]

yes closed system test as well, same setup as yours except i had a little bit of tube between elbow and gauge fitting. bit of a pain using the Lucy portafilter with the notch, had to cut a bit of insertion rubber to plug the notch, next time i will use my newer silvia portafilter without the notch.

Originally i tried 2 copper washers and a fibre washer between then and it was way to low under 7 bar, removing the fibre washer made it about 8.5 bar.

the copper washers i used were a little convex so i flattened them down and dressed them with emery and then i hit 9 bar so it was a bit of trial and error, i did have a bit of scale in the OPV which possibly could have effected the seating of the valve as well.

but all good now, will be interesting to see what my silvia V1 down at the beach house is set to.

[randyrob]

You got lucky!

Mine was 11.5 Bar as well, adding a second washer droppied down a bit but not 9 bar. I'll try again with 2 x new washers perhaps the old one have been squashed down too much.





Did you use a closed system to test? here's mine



Cheers Rob.

[koshari]

ok, checked the OPV and it was peaking above 11.5 bar, now with another pair of copper washers its pretty much bang on 9 bar now.

[randyrob]

In reality it's not actually an issue for me because I usually start clearing out the wet steam at 120*C and steam milk from there so it rarely gets above 140*C.
Not sure what everyone else does?

Just the odd occasion when you get distracted and it would skyrocket.

[koshari]

Rancillio Miss Lucy Mods

My steamers all get up around that temp, its alarming isn't it. Even more so when you consider that's the temp they have been getting up to all along! Interesting what you discover with accurate temperature monitoring. I have left the steamers all on the original thermostat, alternatively you could use the alarm output to control the steam temp if you so desired.

BTW did you have to cut away a little bit of the thicker black painted steel plate on the left lower side beneath the stainless control panel cover to make room for your cabling loom to the controller box?

[randyrob]

i see you just placed a S/S screw in the hole the tamper was previously mounted in.

I'm giving auto tune a spin, definately getting better results with it.

The only issue i'm having now is the Steam Thermostat doesn't cut out until 157*C which is aufully close to the main cut off switch @ 165*C.
There is a bit of play on the thermostat since installing the thermocoupler so i'm wondering if that is causing the issue or if I need to replace
the Thermostat.

Cheers Rob.

[koshari]

i see you just placed a S/S screw in the hole the tamper was previously mounted in.

[randyrob]

All I can say is goodluck! I spent 45 mins dremelling the same size project box and got so close to making it fit but there wasnt enough brass thread left to keep the lid closed, tho you might be a more patient person than myself

I just finished wiring mine up and pulled a coffee 5 minutes ago I don't think I gave it enough time to warm up was it overshot a little bit (not a 20 Deg C swing like it was previously)
I'll let it warm up and see how it responds.

Only spot I could find to mount the SSR, I replaced the silicon hoses while it was in pieces.



The white doublesided tape looks a bit daggy but it's stonger than the black stuff I had on hand.

[koshari]

yes mine being the same is possibly a little small, i have used smaller .5mm2 gauge teflon wiring ( if you were to do this you will need to fuse the active wire at the power switch as you would break gauge from the internal 1mm2 wiring 500mA was suitable for protecting .5mm2) so i think i will be able to live with it being tight at the back, its the brass posts at the front where the lid screws screw into that i may need to file the inner sides off to get the opening size for the controllers 45mm width. just hoping i can get by without hitting the internal threads.

i also covered the exposed mains wiring with heatshrink tubing to maintain double insulation of the mains supply to the controller outside of the enclosure.
I also just let the autotune select the parameters which worked very well. of coarse the autotune needs the element to be hooked up to monitor the temp rise rate to set the PID parameters accurately.

in my case i mounted the SSD and the fuse holder on the stainless panel that separated the tank cavity from the boiler cavity.

[randyrob]

Nice!

The enclosure I got from evilbay was a tad too tiny so I grabbed a black one with the same idea in mind,

You don't happen to have the dimensions to cutout for the pid to slide into project box at all? it would be a great help.

Cheers Rob.

EDIT: looks to be 1/32 DIN (24mm x 48mm)
so according to this site ==> http://blog.lesman.com/2012/08/09/wh...anel-cut-outs/
the cutout needs to be 22.5mm x 45mm