I've had a Vetrano for about 4 weeks now, and I'm happy with its performance with one exception: I'm getting a lot of secondary vibration when the pump kicks on. The drip tray and cover rattle (a lot) when doing the water dance. They quiet down a bit once the stream smooths out. The pump itself doesn't make a lot of noise like people have described with cavitation. Of course as long as I remember to press on the drip tray when the pump is on things are quiet, but this doesn't seem like it should be necessary with a "quiet" rotary pump machine.

Does anyone have any experience in solving this? I've thought of adding some damping material to the tray and cover, but should this really be necessary?

I assume it is the grate that is vibrating. If so, mine fits quite tightly and has little, if any vibration. Maybe yours is too loose.

All manufactured products have a tolerance. Some will be loose, some tight.

You may be able to do a little judicious tweaking [bending] to snug things up.

The grate definitely fits loosely--it's hard to imagine that it is supposed to be snug as there's a good 1/8" gap on each side between the sides of the grate and the lower enclosure. I was able to tuck some heat-shrink tubing on each side, and pull the grate slightly away from the back of the machine, and it's much quieter. The drip tray still vibrates a bit, but a thumb silences it until it has some water in it. I pulled the top cover off and everything seems tight, although I'm wondering about some sort of vibration isolation mounting for the pump itself?

I guess I had higher expectations for a "quiet" rotary machine--if this is quiet, I'd hate to live with a vibratory pump machine. At least it makes great espresso.

Thanks for the feedback.

EvanPatton wrote:I guess I had higher expectations for a "quiet" rotary machine--if this is quiet, I'd hate to live with a vibratory pump machine. At least it makes great espresso.

A quiet vibe machine can be very quiet. See My Vibiemme Domobar Super... getting quieter

Dump the heat-shrink tubing and get some foam tape like dynamat or the like; you won't regret it.

Something is not right the Vetrano is very quiet. You need to take the outer shell off and have a look inside. My guess is there is some part of the pump touching the frame. If there is simply move it, it could have been moved during shipping.

First, thanks for the responses. I pulled the cover per Chris' suggestion and determined that the vibration is coming from the motor (removed pump head from motor and vibration was still present), so cavitation is definitely eliminated. Confirmed no contact between the motor and the housing. Loosening the mounting screws helped reduce the vibration a bit, but didn't make it go away completely. Even though the motor is mounted on elastomeric dampers and has some compliance, it looks like it could use some additional damping (or a better balanced motor).

Buttoned everything back up, including tightening the motor mounts. Added strips of Velcro "loops" to the sides of the grate and the bottom of the drip tray per cafeIKE's recommendation and voila--no rattles. Life is good.

Meanwhile the crew at Chris' is still noodling on the problem--the first reported instance (I feel so honored!). Per everyone else's comments, customer support has been great.

A brief update on the vibration problem with the Vetrano. I've clearly isolated it to the motor--while it seems to run smoothly, it vibrates enough and at the right frequency to turn my Vetrano into a one-pump band. The Velcro helped a bit, but not enough. Per others' suggestions, I finally got around to finding Dynamat and stuck 2 square feet of it liberally around the inside of the machine. I took care not to cover any ventilation holes. The Dynamat stuff is pretty amazing (if expensive)--it made the stainless steel panels almost sound like solid steel when tapped--very good vibration dampening material.

The end result is something significantly less buzzy than before, but there is still a resonance induced by the motor, and the drip tray and cup tray still make more noise than I want. I have one last thing to try, and that is rubber washers for the four motor mounting screws. I'm reasonably confident this will bring the noise to an acceptable level, since loosening the mounting screws significantly reduced the vibration before adding the Dynamat.

Thanks for everyone's help. I'll post an update when I get around to trying my last idea.