notquitemac Junior Member Joined: 5 Jun 2008 Posts: 15 Location: Ithaca, NY Expertise: I love coffee
Espresso: NS ellimatic
Posted Mon Jun 30, 2008, 10:24pm Subject: Re: Rebuilding (to some extent) an Ellimatic - need your help and your photos!
I finally took apart the steam wand, and found (one of) the sources of the nasty smell that was still present in the steam after cleaning the boiler - grease in the steamer valve. I gave it a good cleaning and got most of the (largely unnecessary) grease off the seals, and now the smell is almost completely gone. There was a also a lot of gunk in the head of the steamer which had kept me from getting decent output through the head.
Now I'm faced with a new problem: way too much steam, so much so that when I open the valve all the way I don't get so much a blast of steam as I do a jet of superheated water. I haven't managed to get a pressure gauge onto the group yet (the threads aren't anything conveniently standard), but the pump itself was making plenty of pressure. Does anyone have any clever tricks for measuring the temperature inside the boiler? I have no idea if the thermostat or pressurestat are working properly, although the pressurestat did seem to respond to having its adjustment screw loosened.
mitchellb Senior Member Joined: 20 Jul 2007 Posts: 595 Location: Houston, TX Expertise: I love coffee
Espresso: Astra Pro, SAMA Lever Grinder: Mazzer Major Vac Pot: Cory DKG-S Drip: Bodum French Press Roaster: HGDB
Posted Mon Jun 30, 2008, 11:24pm Subject: Re: Rebuilding (to some extent) an Ellimatic - need your help and your photos!
great job cleaning.. make sure teh boiler fill probe is set correctly.. if the boiler is full of too much water than the steam will force it out of the steam wand..
one thing you can do is fit a sleeve of rubber tubing around your steam wand and attach it to the gauge
If you prefer to go by temperature, Dan Kehn's HX primer has a graph of steam pressure to temperature here. Let the machine idle and measure the initial water temp or measure the surface of the boiler (doesn't seem to be terrible accurate though..)
I found that my elli had a ton of steam pressure too.. i never really got that into steaming caps iwth it because for the most part the steam was gross (until i did a thorough cleaning) and then i really couldn't get a hang of the wand.. if you have experience frothing on other machines it should be okay once you get the temps right.
I would recommend for you to do some searching on whether the wand or steam tips are replaceable.
Hi, i looked at replacing the steam tip on my ellimatic too, but couldn't find a suitable replacement tip with the right thread arrangement.The standard 4 hole tip is pretty hard to work with frothing small quantities of milk.I ended up blocking three of the holes with small pieces of toothpick, leaving the one hole facing away from the machine open, once i figured out this worked well, i used j-b weld to seal up the holes for good.
or IIRC i have heard of people welding all four holes and piloting new ones.. takes care, though, to arrange the new holes (i'd recommend 2 most likely, but i am sure steam tips have been discussed ad nauseam on this forum and HB) in the correct angle.
I have access to a full machine shop including CNC mills/lathes, so I could very well machine and thread my own steam tip. Would be a fun little project. I plan on machining an aluminum tamper (probably next week), so I'm looking for specs on how the best tamper heads are shaped and what kind of grind they have on them (convex? mirror finish or slightly rough?). I know some of that is subjective, and machining a flat head would be way easier so I'll probably go with that.
I haven't tried steaming any milk yet, I want to get the espresso side of things running more smoothly. Earlier today I pulled the boiler water level measuring spike out of the boiler; I guess I hadn't cleaned it thoroughly because there was some corrosion or something on it, so I scotch-brite-d it off and stuck it back in, which seems to have fixed the hot water cannon problem. I don't really have any good way of checking the water level in the boiler, but it was spazzing out a bit before I cleaned it (filling what seemed like a lot of water) and is behaving now, so I'm guessing that was the issue.
I've acquired a pressure gauge (although it has a 3.5" dial, kinda cool in an overkill kind of way) and I've been trying to find a good place to mount it. All the fixtures are a pressure-fit variety that isn't terribly standard for physics applications so I haven't been able to cobble something together yet to measure group pressure. I did check pressure at the pump, which was definitely strong enough.
I'm going to read that HX primer and see if it has any insight into tuning this little beast...
i wouldn't suspect the problem at the group would be that there wasn't enough pressure, but rather that there was too much.. you want around 9 bar and you may have to adjust the opv (and maybe even change the spring) to get there..
as far as tampers go, i'd suggest mirror finish.. the espresso grinds by their nature will stick to any rough finish.
also it seems as though you managed to measure the pressure at the group, but what i did was purchase a portafilter for an NS Beach direct from nuovo simonelli and use a 3/8 (i think) standard thread with teflon tape to attach it one.. I much prefered the beach porafilter to the original elli, and ended up lopping the end off of that one and going naked.. The beach portafilter will need to be filed down a little to fit, but is a quality filter head.
unreachable Junior Member Joined: 26 Jun 2008 Posts: 3 Location: Germany Expertise: I love coffee
Posted Thu Jul 3, 2008, 3:39am Subject: Re: Rebuilding (to some extent) an Ellimatic - need your help and your photos!
Hi notquitemac,
thanks for this detailed and pictured story about cleaning your Elli. Very impressing.
I'm now facing the same situation, I received my used Elli from an Italian Ebay dealer yesterday and it seems to work, apart from the smelly steam. Not too bad, but having seen your pictures of the boiler I'm in favour to do the same procedure. Even though its nothing that can be done at one evening...
What sealings or other parts did you change before re-assembling? I'm only thinking of the boiler sealing, but maybe there are some more that should be changed.
Thanks in advance for your help, and if you have a user manual for this pretty machine, please let me know. Would be very keen on having it ;o)
notquitemac Junior Member Joined: 5 Jun 2008 Posts: 15 Location: Ithaca, NY Expertise: I love coffee
Espresso: NS ellimatic
Posted Thu Jul 3, 2008, 9:17am Subject: Re: Rebuilding (to some extent) an Ellimatic - need your help and your photos!
You could definitely do what I did in a night, if you had good organization and all the tools you need. I waited to order parts until I had the machine completely disassembled, so that also increased the rebuild time. The major hangups I had were getting the boiler halved (the gasket between had melted to both faces; I got then apart with a razor blade and then used a belt sander to get rid of the remains of the gasket. For cleaning I used citric acid to descale, and a wire brush and scotchbrite to scrub the stuff out.
The only parts I needed to replace when I did the rebuild were the boiler gasket and the two little gaskets around the heating element. I needed the rest because the machine was missing a couple parts, and the group head gasket was shot. If you're ordering parts you might as well order an extra group head gasket or two.
How does the Elli do its temperature/pressure regulation? The Ellimatic has an electronics box inside and a lot of sensors, but I can't see either present in the regular Elli you posted the photo of.
Unfortunately, I don't have a manual for the machine, and the NS North American dealer I talked to didn't have one either. What they do have, however, is a parts list with an exploded view of the insides, at least for the Ellimatic; the Elli will be somewhat different electrically, but I think the mechanics are basically the same.
mitchellb Senior Member Joined: 20 Jul 2007 Posts: 595 Location: Houston, TX Expertise: I love coffee
Espresso: Astra Pro, SAMA Lever Grinder: Mazzer Major Vac Pot: Cory DKG-S Drip: Bodum French Press Roaster: HGDB
Posted Sat Jul 5, 2008, 2:00pm Subject: Re: Rebuilding (to some extent) an Ellimatic - need your help and your photos!
notquitemac Said:
How does the Elli do its temperature/pressure regulation? The Ellimatic has an electronics box inside and a lot of sensors, but I can't see either present in the regular Elli you posted the photo of.
- any modification (valve) known to avoid the need of opening the steam valve when starting the machine? I thought I read something about this.
- the portafilter is very strange, and it is difficult to fit standard size cups under it. Any hint how to modify the portafilter or do any others fit?
- it seems that the espresso is a bit too hot even though I always let some water come out before brewing. Can the water temperature be lowered?
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