Conti XEOS Commercial Machine - Advice?

[kwksilver]

good links Milo!
I think that is the boiler group we are lookign at.

Yes there was a gasket, yes it is the expensive one :p
It is usually a paper/ glass based one they get hard and brittle and disintegrate when you remove the heatign element.

Since that has happened you are committed to just fixing her up before the test drive. that is fine.

If you only saw "small flakes" inside the boiler, that is EXTREMELY good news. bad scale means you can grab handfuls, in the literal sense, without any scraping.

I am very much looking forward to the detailed pics of the headgroup and the HX. This is going to be the interesting part!



PS: I do hope to enroll you in the camp that says big commercial HX do not give an inch in espresso quality regarding temperature ctrl. I think the fact that commercial HX are stable (and thus extremely precise) but not with a high degree of control (and thus not so accurate) only means it doesn't matter.

 (I have long felt that this .5C temp obsessing they do on home machines and HB is nonsense. temp varies per location and during the shot by many degrees centigrade and that is where a huge commercial HX actually will have far less variance although nobody brags with it...)

Either way you now own in excess of 10lbs thermal mass per grouphead, that beats the real E61 let alone the Spanish knockoff junk.


To Dante (who is surely reading this thread): How do you feel about your temps on the coppertina?

[Dante]

PS: I do hope to enroll you in the camp that says big commercial HX do not give an inch in espresso quality regarding temperature ctrl. I think the fact that commercial HX are stable (and thus extremely precise) but not with a high degree of control (and thus not so accurate) only means it doesn't matter.

 (I have long felt that this .5C temp obsessing they do on home machines and HB is nonsense. temp varies per location and during the shot by many degrees centigrade and that is where a huge commercial HX actually will have far less variance although nobody brags with it...)

Either way you now own in excess of 10lbs thermal mass per grouphead, that beats the real E61 let alone the Spanish knockoff junk.


To Dante (who is surely reading this thread): How do you feel about your temps on the coppertina?

You must be a mind reader Felix! Yes, I have been following this thread with great interest. And yes, you were right - the La Cimbali kicks a$$. I had planned to get a thermocouple to monitor temps on it but - what for? I pull shot after shot of thick, syrupy red nectar from it that nothing else matters! The microfoam is where I am getting in trouble. I steam only a small quantity of milk which on the Vetrano is easy but impossible on the M30! Maybe a two-hole wand tip would work better?

[milowebailey]

I steam only a small quantity of milk which on the Vetrano is easy but impossible on the M30! Maybe a two-hole wand tip would work better?

Dante

I had the same problem with the Brasilia... you can try putting toothpicks in 2 of the holes and see if that helps before you fork out the $$ for a new tip.  Once I did that bam.... microfoam.

Milowebailey

[Dante]

I steam only a small quantity of milk which on the Vetrano is easy but impossible on the M30! Maybe a two-hole wand tip would work better?

Dante

I had the same problem with the Brasilia... you can try putting toothpicks in 2 of the holes and see if that helps before you fork out the $$ for a new tip.  Once I did that bam.... microfoam.

Milowebailey

Hey, thanks for the tip, Larry! I will try that tomorrow. OT: if you still have some Gethumbwini to spare, could I buy 5# to make my pending order of coffees (Alaska and Suiza) add up to 15# to make my shipping cost more efficient? Thanks man!

[kwksilver]

Heeh,
You definitely do not need to bother with a new tip.
What quantity do you steam? (in ml is fine, and overly precise is not necessary)

For example I steamed something on the order of 250ml when I first learned on commercial 3 hole wands.
I literally stored the metal pitcher in the freezer, added milk to the already frozen pitcher, stuck that back in the freezer, prepped my grind and THEN steamed.

Now I do it all during extraction, but that adds pressure, so don't do it to learn.

The trick with steaming on your cimbali is mindlessly simple.

When the frozen pitcher feels warm on the side the wand is submerged STOP!  (you are already there, you have under 10 seconds)
No swirling the pitcher or moving the wand in the pitcher. The steamwand can be placed to blow against the NEARSIDE wall of the pitcher, that will created a double whirlpool or 2 sided or heartshaped current or whatever.

(the same side of the wand is where the wand tip can blow. That is easiest with the S wands of cimbali if you face the machine and the pitcher wall closer to your body is where you submerge and what the tip blows against. Others do it differently)

Another thing:  When you read guides they tell you to start submerged to preheat the milk...skip that too. Mighty pointless on your machine. Heat is the only thing you aren't really after.

start just below the surface and simply get to "bubble depth" right away. Forget this blurping about stages. crack it wide open get to bubble depth (at same time if you can), as soon as its hot on the wall stop. (way before its uncormfortably hot)

Dante: Have you tried adjusting her feet so that your preferred wand is a little higher than the other side? Also the front of the machine a little higher than the rear. In general if you watch a lot of pros the heating element sided wand is preferred by a lot of them. I  subscribed to that on the Cimbali. The bubbling of the water in the boiler seems more vigorous on the right. I could get far dryer steam out of the left wand no matter who I raised higher.

Dry hard steam is the best. The dry steam also contains far less heat energy at the same temperature. That has to do with specific heat capacity of water vs air. I bet Buttwhisker could write essays on it...

Cheers,
          Felix


PS: I am glad the machine turned out to be a joy Dante. I would have hated for that to be a dud feeling for you.

[Stubbie]

What is the best way for me to feed this beast some water without plumbing directly in as you mentioned in an earlier post?  I don't know where it's going to land in the house yet, so I was thinking about picking up a Flojet (any one got one they wanna sell?) so I can put it anywhere i can run 220.  Before that though, can I just put a bucket above the machine with a section of tubing into it to feed the boiler by gravity until the pump is primed?

I'm ready to do some testing!!

-Stubbie

[kwksilver]

Flojet is completely unnecessary for a rotary pump of that caliber.
if you skim my first monstrous reply carefully you will see I addressed the pump specs and needs.

It can lift roughly 6ft of water column, after which it can still dispense the range of pressure's you desire.

What does that mean?

A bucket of water on the floor or the counter works just dandy. Use a clean foodsafe container for obvious reasons.
I like to hold the house going to the machine above pump level and fill it with water before sticking it in the bucket. That helps the rotary pump get going. It isn't strictly necessary, but the pump (read the bearings) cools itself by dumping heat into the water that flows through it. So the initial dry seconds do shorten bearing life. Procon distinguishes between models that "can run dry" and those that cannot. technically the ones u find in espresso machines are not supposed to. (the pump maker for 99% of all commercial espresso makers and 99%[this could be less actually] of all commercial soda fountains and beer fountains)

Bottom line: a hose and a bucket is fine and your bucket does not need to be elevated at all. The way you set pressure is such that a procon pump is pointless if not detrimental to good shots.

Why? procon pumps function pulsatile, so the pressure they create ebbs and flows. The procon pumps set pressure via bypass and essentially make pressure as P= baseline + X

P is the pressure output
baseline= pressure input
X is the work done by the pump. Any additional work opens a futile valve.

This valve measures the pressure difference between input and output and as such X is always a value plus baseline.

With the flojet your output varies exactlay as your input does and your pump does not keep pressure constant !!!!

NOTHING is better for commercial rotaries than an EXACT constant input pressure even if that is zero or net negative (as in pump must lift).
That is why you are encouraged to put a pressure regulator between the household line and the machine.



RANT WARNING:
This whole flojet plus girly home machine is sometimes a scam by the vendor and sometimes necessary because the machine was designed by a fool or a cheapskate. One cannot design a "plumb in" machine and then include an internal pump so weak it requires positive inlet pressure.

Why? Because no espresso machine I know of is able to SET a pressure. They all set the above mentioned "x"

If espresso machines could set a  numerical pressure value and compensate for fluctuating input MAYBE a flojet as a helper to a weak internal pump would make sense. But considering how expensive such a compensatory mechanism is, one can be sure no such thing will be found in a machine with a skimpy internal pump.

Home machine's just aren't truly miniature professional appliances. More often than not they are models of their bigger brother's with for more "cost effective" internal solutions. Plumbing in is not defined by just attaching a hose...

This Flojet effect has been beaten to death on HB for anyone who doesn't buy my rant.

[kwksilver]

one more thing (1.5 really):

The pump doesn't NEED priming, I just liek to bathe it.

filling the boiler won't "prime" it.

There are two ways from boielr to pump:

1.) The inlet solenoid blocks the automatic filler and is controlled by the float.
2.) the manual override is just that it is another circuit witha  spring held one way valve that you can push open to establish a filling route.

Want to prime the pump this backwards way? (I don't see why or why not) find that manual overthingymabob fill your boiler engage it into the open position....wait and hold... you are now sorta primed.

The line between the boiler and the pump now contains water anyways.

I will now go look at your pictures to determine whether you have a manual overfill. Maybe I can see.

[Dante]

Hi Felix! I used the feet adjustments as you suggested but I probably steam really small volumes of milk for this to work. I'll try the toothpick fix this weekend but if that fails, I am getting new tips with less holes on them. 

[kwksilver]

let me know how the toothpicks work for you.
I could imagine that it works. I have heard of it.
You are reducing total diameter at the end, but it sure isn't a smaller diameter in the remaining holes.

Are you willing to waste some milk in larger quantities for practice? I think you can steam fairly small quantities, but learning THAT steam wand with small quantities before having used larger ones is probably really really difficult.

Best of luck!