Bought on Ebay during an ill-advised fit of enthusiasm. Assumed it was a Fiorenzato Ducale, but I can see no evidence of any Fiorenzato markings. I guess it's around 20 - 30 years old.

It has rather unusual groupheads and something of a surfeit of wands and taps. If anybody knows anything at all about these machines I would greatly appreciate it.

Never heard of them, but if found this: http://www.ducale.com. They seem to specialize in (coffee) vending machines.

can you take a picture of the logo on the valves?
if is a logo

Here's the logo on the back of the machine. Ducale, Parma, Italy.



And the water tap. I am really terrible at taking pictures in the dark. Sorry. The bottom bit says Ducale in scripty writing. You get the idea I think.

Sometimes there will be a sticker with more information (power, SN, model, etc..) on the frame under the drip tray.

These are bizarre looking groups. Are you sure it's a pump machine? The groups look like ancient steam pressure jobs

Well it's funny you should say that... The machine came without a pump, and it turns out the previous owners never had one. I thought this was down to lack of knowledge, you hear of machines being used with only line pressure from time to time.

So I bought a pump, got some advice on TMC and wired it up. Fine. Then whilst scratching my head over the plumbing I opened up the boiler to discover there is no HX circuit. The two vertical pipes are the pickups for the groups.


So with Jim's little clue, I'm wondering if indeed it is a steam pressure machine, and indeed what the hell that means, and am I going to get a decent espresso out of this machine if I continue the rebuild?

Thanks a lot, it feels like we're getting somewhere. We must be because my head hurts.

You're the proud owner of an espresso -- as defined before 1948 -- machine. Somewhat ironically, it's the person your current machine is named after who put that definition out of business.

There were lots of die hards who preferred the old style 1 bar pressure, 2.5 ounce per seven gram espressos (or demi-tasse). Certainly French companies made machines like this into the 70s. It looks like there was at least one Italian company doing the same.

There are espresso machine collectors, and they may value a anachronism like this.

I invite them to get in touch quickly then because I'm gonna convert it to HX I reckon. If I remove one of the water tap outlet pipes from the boiler and replace it with an inlet from the pump, then link this to a hx coil inside the boiler which goes out to the the two grouphead feed pipes then I should be in business provided everything can withstand the pressure.

Any thoughts please?

Good luck with the thermodynamics of it all.
Oh, and more great fun, you'd have to come up with a way to heat the group.