Why not remove steam wand no-burn tube?

[Jonathon]

Other than the obvious reasons of burning yourself and having to be extra careful not to burn milk on it, is there any reason not to remove the no-burn rubber tube? (assuming you're out of warranty)

Just for fun I removed the tube in my Giotto and the increase in steam power is definitely noticeable.

[TOK]

It is only a marketing gimmick Jonathon. Once one manufacturer did it and it was written up and started to become one of the items on the list of things for people to tick off when deciding on buying one machine over another, other manufacturers had to follow suit.

I've had a string of NON "cool touch" machines at home with virtually never a problem. And if you touch it you soon learn not to to.....and lets remember that it is only hot for a short time after you have used th steamer. Before you use it (the steamer), and long after you've used it....the pipe isnt hot anyway.

The only thing you would be concerned about when removing is that the job is done well and there are no resulting steam leaks afterwards.

Hope that helps.

[Jonathon]

Gotcha, thanks TOK.

[MrDerrickC]

Is the tube easy to put back if removed? Seeing how easily reversible this mod is.

[MorganGT]

Most of the machines I have tinkered with that have cool touch wands seemed to be pretty easy to remove and replace the internal tube.

I've also had a cool touch wand that had a random fault where sometimes when the tap was turned on the steam would start to flow then immediately stop again - turned out there was an air bubble in the inner wall of the tube at one spot that had split, so when the steam flowed it inflated the bubble like a balloon and blocked the tube completely. Pretty easy to fix by pulling the tube and binning it.

[ArtW]

Is the tube easy to put back if removed? Seeing how easily reversible this mod is.

I read an article that said its virtually impossible. If you think you might want to reverse you may be better off taking off the entire wand and installing a non cool touch wand rather than converting.

Whilst I agree with TOK's comments about the threat of burning oneself on a regular wand being highly overrated, I do find it slightly easier to clean off. That said, if there really is a noticeable improvement in steaming speed, I'd go for it.

[Jonathon]

I can't imagine it's too hard to replace. The hardest part would be pushing it through the bends in the steam tube, but I'm guessing a bit of food safe lube would make this fairly easy.