Breville Smart - Torque loss?

[Andy]

Hey all Smart Grinder owners,
a fellow CoffeeSnob was making a coffee yesterday and his grinder stopped.

A quick inspection showed that it trying to grind a coffee bag one-way valve!

He removed the valve and cleaned the burrs, the grinder spins but under load it won't grind beans.

For my logic... If the motor spins it should be fine and I would leaning towards burr-set alignment or even the nut that holds the bottom burrs in place as the reason it doesn't appear to have the same torque.

I don't own a Smart grinder but I'm sure that others that do might be able to shine some light on the possible fixes?

Ta in advance.

[noidle22]

The motor will have been trying to drive the main nylon gear as it doesn't have any sort of safety clutch mechanism.

As a result, the metal worm gear from the motor will have chewed away at several of the nylon gear teeth. The grinder will spin when not under load as the momentum of the system will get past the damaged teeth but when it needs to do work, it just slips on those damaged teeth.

Time for a new grinder unless the owner can source a new nylon gear out of another Smart Grinder or BES860/BES870 grinder. Breville don't sell these gears as a spare part.

[Andy]

Excellent answer Noidle, thanks for taking the time.

It's always hard to guess when you haven't seen the gizzards of one.
Not good news for the owner though. Pity Breville didn't have sheer-pin or clutch in it and also a pity they don't sell the parts but I guess they are in the market to sell equipment not bits.

To be fair to them if the grinder was only grinding beans then it would still be working.

[deegee]

Seems to me that this is "planned obsolesence" so typical of appliance manufacturers. In other words, designed to fail. Their refusal to supply the parts tends to reinforce the theory.

There are, or at least were, a couple of places in the USA or Canada selling 3D printed gears to fit, but as I recall the price and fairly expensive postage made it hardly worth the time, effort and cost.

To echo what has been said here many times before, probably beeter to put the money toward a good quality grinder that will last for many years, and won't crap out the first time it find a piece of plastic among the beans.

[Yelta]

Seems to me that this is "planned obsolesence" so typical of appliance manufacturers. In other words, designed to fail. Their refusal to supply the parts tends to reinforce the theory.

Not sure about planned obsolescence, IMO you get what you pay for, the life span for these seems to be around the two year mark.
Breville Smart Grinder BCG800 Reviews - ProductReview.com.au