I searched the forums to see if anything had previously been posted on this, but if I missed it please let me know.

This is a hypothetical question. Say you purchased something along the lines of a 1 or 2 group Linea, and wanted to run it off 110v. Obviously the pump would need to be a 110v pump, but what else would need to be replaced? My electrical knowledge is pretty limited, but that first things that come to mind are the heating elements. Any other ideas?

The brain boxes/dosing pads. $$$$$$$

You probably need to change out all of the solenoids too.

If you are backed into a corner on this....what might be something in the middle, although you would have a franken-machine.... would be to run the heating element as 110v (single component swap out) and use a transformer for the balance of the electrical load at 220v. The transformer could be like 10% of the size since there's not much wattage.

It will take forever to heat up though.

Wes

That's a pretty reasonable idea. You will likely want to get a 110V pump motor as well... those seem to run 300W or so, and the 220V ones might be even more. A transformer for this wattage will be a lot more than a simple transformer for low-draw electronics.

Reflecting a little bit, I don't think that you're going to have much luck with an LM conversion at all, even if you could change the elements. I don't think that a 2 group Linea is going to run well on 110V and 15A (or 20A for that matter). The 2 groups run a standard wattage of 3500W. That's about 30 amps at 110V, if I have done my math right. If you cut the element wattage down to ~2200W, I think you'd probably wind up with a pretty unpredictable espresso machine, not to even mention how long it will take to heat up.

Moreover, good luck finding a 2 group, and give up finding a 1 group. I've never seen one for sale second hand, ever. If you get it new, you can get it 110V.

djmonkeyhater wrote:You probably need to change out all of the solenoids too.



Wes

Yes, bare minimum you would have to replace: solenoids, pump, heating elements. Even the GS3 takes a while to heat up... I imagine a 2-group linea taking a couple hours to heat up with lower wattage heating elements. plus you could get temp fluctuations from delayed recovery time

The largest load you can put on a 20 Amp circuit breaker is 80% or 16 Amp. That's about a 2000 Watt heater not counting for the pump, etc. If you go to a 30 Amp 120 v circuit you'll need to pull a new circuit anyway so I'd go ahead and put in the 220. The machine will not need to be modified and will heat up much faster!