AndyS wrote:3. Scace has a fine filter that helps prevent clogging of the orifice, while the NR does not appear to have a filter. NR's ball valve on the means one can easily clear the clogs, but it will be tedious to return to the original flow setting after doing so. Inexperienced personnel will fail to take necessary care in resetting the valve.

4. Different flow settings will result in non-reproducible pressure readings. But as Eric said, the ball valve allows you to use a "custom" flow rate in making your measurements

Yup. The ball valve will prove to be a pain. I used a needle-valve in my homemade version of the Scace and, as Andy says, the valve is difficult to adjust and results in non-reproducible readings.

That's one of several reasons I abandoned the homebrew project and got a genuine Scace I!

erics wrote:The pressure gage associated with this device is, as far as I'm concerned, of dubious quality at best. Keep in mind that this is one example that I happen to have but still . . . The gage has no name on it whatsoever, comes equipped with a mechanical snubber (ouch) and, for this one example, has about a 10% error in readings.

For some reason most of the Italian manufacturers use a lot of cheap components.
For example on my machine (Bezzera Ellisse DE 2GR) which is about $5k new they use a cheap $30 pressure gauge.
I understand cost cutting but sometimes it's ridiculous.
Anyway I will relay your observations to the guy in Germany. I asked them to join the thread and post some detailed info and images but obviously they don't care.

erics wrote:The temperature port may be speced at 4.0 mm but that would be a real tight fit. I'm not saying it would not work but you would need to be a little gentle with that particular thermocouple. The temperature gage that was offered with this device (probably an option) is about on the same level as the pressure gage, well, maybe a little worse.

They don't offer a probe with this deal. Anyway the standard K type thermocouple is not good enough.
I have found a local manufacturer that offers pt100 and T type probes with threaded connection on it for about 20€. If I do buy this I will make a thread so I can fit the new probe properly.

erics wrote:Flow is regulated by a ball valve discharging into a standard (?) espresso machine hot water wand end piece. It is a little tough to regulate (as you would expect) but can be done and is a nice feature.

At least something nice about this device

erics wrote:The portafilter base is a standard E-61 and would be a questionable fit on your Ellisse and/or other Bezzera like groupheads.

In summary, save your monies and buy the real thing.

They list this one as bezzera, astoria and brazilia compatible. I will have to ask them for some images and dimensions. This could be a real concern.
As for the "real" thing: Too expensive, my current setup: Bezzera ellise, bezzera grinder both fully rebuilt + some cheap tamper, pitcher etc was about 550€ so I can't justify the cost. Anyway I only need this for initial setup and maintenance of this single machine. Maybe I should just fix my drilled basket and K type probe and forget the whole idea.

I will do that but I don't expect much. I tried to contact them with some basic question about barismo spec tamper (weights, dimensions etc) and never heard from them.

Anyway that's it for this. It turned out that this is not as good as I hoped.
They sent me some high res photos of the device, if anyone wants to take a look:

https://picasaweb.google.com/1183957916...ermofilter