this post was submitted on 20 Mar 2024
274 points (97.6% liked)

Coffee

8457 readers
3 users here now

☕ - The hot beverage that powers the world!

Coffee gadgets - It's always great to learn about new gadgets. Please share your favorite hardware or full setups. It might inspire newcomers to experiment!

Local businesses - Please promote your local businesses. If you are not the owner of the business you are promoting, kindly ask the owner if it's okay. It would be great if the business has a physical store to include an exterior or interior shot.

founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
martijn
[email protected]
[email protected]
274
Pulled a ~ 600 € DeLonghi coffee maker out of the dumpster and invested about 50 € in spare parts (water tank, grounds container, and a new magnet valve). Seems like I have a new coffee machine now (storage.googleapis.com)
submitted 9 months ago by [email protected] to c/coffee
24 comments fedilink hide all child comments
 

Pulled a ~ 600 € DeLonghi coffee maker out of the dumpster and invested about 50 € in spare parts (water tank, grounds container, and a new magnet valve). Seems like I have a new coffee machine now 😁☕

(It would have gone even faster and without a puddle on the kitchen counter if I had put in the gaskets from the start. 🤦 Ah well.)

/cc @coffee

all 50 comments
sorted by: hot top controversial new old
[–] NegativeLookBehind 27 points 9 months ago (4 children)

Is it just me or should the insides of a coffee maker not look like the exposed workings of a jet engine

[–] [email protected] 20 points 9 months ago

Tbf this is a relatively fancy espresso maker.

[–] LordOfTheChia 10 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago)

Looks like a "super automatic" espresso machine.

It grinds the whole beans and typically they also have a doser (measures the weight or quantity of the ground up coffee beans), then it tamps the grounds, brews the coffee (which is some at a specific temperature and pressure), then ejects the used up coffee puck in a bin in the bottom of the machine.

The mechanism for the automatic tamping, brewing (with pressure valve) and ejection is one very complicated piece as well as the controls for the motor that operates it. Then there's the temperature and pressure controls for both the brewing of the coffee and the milk frother the machine likely has.

Edit: Video with partial teardown and which shows how the internals operate

https://youtu.be/cknj9CKHJcY

[–] HappycamperNZ 10 points 9 months ago (1 children)

If you're not drinking turbine coffee whats the point?

[–] NegativeLookBehind 5 points 9 months ago

If it doesn’t taste like JP-5 I don’t want it.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 8 months ago

I recently replaced the heating element in my delonghi coffee machine, and was also surprised to see how wild it was inside

[–] workerONE 9 points 9 months ago (1 children)

What do you do for a living and how do you know how to fix coffee makers?

[–] [email protected] 21 points 9 months ago (1 children)

@workerONE Officially, I'm a computer scientist 😉 But over the years, I've fiddled around with enough electronics and mechanical engineering as well that I'm overall pretty good at fixing stuff 🤷

[–] Kbobabob 25 points 9 months ago (1 children)

Just remember, if she doesn't find you handsome at least she finds you handy.

[–] TexasDrunk 1 points 9 months ago

I thought it was twosome, threesome, foursome, and handsome.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 9 months ago

@floe @coffee that’s totally fucking awesome

[–] agent_flounder 5 points 9 months ago (1 children)

Way to go!! I didn't realize these were so fixable but not surprising. My old Gaggia was easy to find parts for and easy to work on.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 9 months ago (2 children)

@agent_flounder Yes, big kudos to DeLonghi as well. They could just have glued everything together into one big epoxy block, but no, they chose to make it actually repairable (and even let you buy replacement parts). 👌

[–] agent_flounder 4 points 9 months ago

Big W for DeLonghi there for sure. New respect unlocked :) it looks like it is well designed and laid out too.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago)

I think they make too much money repairing complex coffee machines to make it difficult

Also unlike phones they don't need to make them small as possible and able to survive being carried all day, so don't have those reasons for making things tight and sealed

[–] Veedem 3 points 9 months ago

Wow great find and work in fixing it up.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 9 months ago

@floe @coffee awesome! 🙌

[–] [email protected] 2 points 9 months ago

Hot damn, nice one

[–] [email protected] 2 points 9 months ago

Pretty neat!

[–] [email protected] 1 points 9 months ago

That’s fantastic! 👏

[–] [email protected] 1 points 9 months ago (1 children)

Amazing dumpster find! How long did it take you to fix?

[–] [email protected] 4 points 9 months ago

@gronjo45 I'd say roughly an hour to take the cover off and find the broken valve, one week waiting for the replacement to ship, and half an hour to put it back in 😉

[–] [email protected] 1 points 9 months ago

It's amazing what a little curiosity can do. Most would consider the machine dead. A friend also had a similar coffee maker that stopped working and just decided to pop the cover off to see if there was anything obvious. A quick replacement of a deteriorated hose and they were back up and running when it otherwise would've ended up in the landfill.