Hello CSers
My very kind cousin gave me a Cimbali Junior grinder, and I gave it a bit of strip and cleanup, mainly to clean it up and secondly because I enjoy a tinker and DIY!!
It was quite straight forward to strip, but geez the edges of the panels are like razor blades.
These are the top and bottom burrs and the carriers prior to clean up (is that the right term for the brass bits?)


Overall view of naked machine:

The top carrier, view from the top:

The bottom of the doser, the spring for the counter was broken, so it doesnt count anymore. Not a major drama, I would never use it anyway:

The dosing unit all cleaned up:
This is a pic of the bottom carrier, lots of stuff stuck top and bottom:


And it also had these casting burrs, which I filed off:

All cleaned up after a good soaking in caffetto:

Cleaned burrs and carriers:


Assembled bottom burr:

This thing is build like a tank, and almost weighs as much. It was made in 1995 and still seems very decent.
Its very different to the built in grinder in my Nemox Cafe Del Opera, and I only used it today to try out on the Faema E98 A1 that I just got going (link to my slow fix it up of the Faema if you are interested: http://coffeesnobs.com.au/YaBB.pl?num=1303139144).
I have a couple of queries that hopefully someone can help with.
How can I assess if the burrs are still serviceable? The edges are still fairly sharp but I have nothing to compare to, so am not sure how sharp brand new ones are.
The grind can be set finer until the burrs clash, is this normal or should there be a stopper somewhere on the machine?
I have only just started playing with it, and have never used a grinder of this calibre, but it seems strange that the espresso grind is only 3 numbers or so (on the dial) higher than the absolute minimum setting where the burrs start to touch. Is this "normal"?
As I ground finer for the shots to stop gushing, the grounds started to clump quite a bit, is there anything that can be done to avoid this?
Has anyone modded this grinder to be doserless?
I also noticed that the bottom burrs are slightly out of level and not properly centric. When I spin the shaft, The but height varies less than about half a mm from lowest to highest point (hard to tell exactly, but its not fully flat), and I could not get the burrs to mount on the carrier so they were properly centric, its out by a mm or so. Is this something to be concerned about?
There is a fair bit of beans etc that get stuck in the top burr carrier above the burrs, I will fit a smaller diameter sleeve in there to try and prevent this, as I only do between 2 and 4 coffees a day, and would prefer to minimise how much stuff stays there. I found an article on how to do this using a PVC pipe fitting.
Cheers and thanks
My very kind cousin gave me a Cimbali Junior grinder, and I gave it a bit of strip and cleanup, mainly to clean it up and secondly because I enjoy a tinker and DIY!!

It was quite straight forward to strip, but geez the edges of the panels are like razor blades.
These are the top and bottom burrs and the carriers prior to clean up (is that the right term for the brass bits?)


Overall view of naked machine:

The top carrier, view from the top:

The bottom of the doser, the spring for the counter was broken, so it doesnt count anymore. Not a major drama, I would never use it anyway:

The dosing unit all cleaned up:

This is a pic of the bottom carrier, lots of stuff stuck top and bottom:


And it also had these casting burrs, which I filed off:

All cleaned up after a good soaking in caffetto:

Cleaned burrs and carriers:


Assembled bottom burr:

This thing is build like a tank, and almost weighs as much. It was made in 1995 and still seems very decent.
Its very different to the built in grinder in my Nemox Cafe Del Opera, and I only used it today to try out on the Faema E98 A1 that I just got going (link to my slow fix it up of the Faema if you are interested: http://coffeesnobs.com.au/YaBB.pl?num=1303139144).
I have a couple of queries that hopefully someone can help with.
How can I assess if the burrs are still serviceable? The edges are still fairly sharp but I have nothing to compare to, so am not sure how sharp brand new ones are.
The grind can be set finer until the burrs clash, is this normal or should there be a stopper somewhere on the machine?
I have only just started playing with it, and have never used a grinder of this calibre, but it seems strange that the espresso grind is only 3 numbers or so (on the dial) higher than the absolute minimum setting where the burrs start to touch. Is this "normal"?
As I ground finer for the shots to stop gushing, the grounds started to clump quite a bit, is there anything that can be done to avoid this?
Has anyone modded this grinder to be doserless?
I also noticed that the bottom burrs are slightly out of level and not properly centric. When I spin the shaft, The but height varies less than about half a mm from lowest to highest point (hard to tell exactly, but its not fully flat), and I could not get the burrs to mount on the carrier so they were properly centric, its out by a mm or so. Is this something to be concerned about?
There is a fair bit of beans etc that get stuck in the top burr carrier above the burrs, I will fit a smaller diameter sleeve in there to try and prevent this, as I only do between 2 and 4 coffees a day, and would prefer to minimise how much stuff stays there. I found an article on how to do this using a PVC pipe fitting.
Cheers and thanks








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