I don't know if other Vibiemme Doubledomo V3 owners have had two Jaeger pressurestats fail in two years, but if so read on. Pstats fail for two main reasons: they get solid deposits from the boiler in between the flexible membrane and the ledge it sits on, or the contacts burn out, usually in the closed position. There was no evidence of deposits in mine (I use deionized water), so my failure is presumably due to burned contacts. (The pstat cannot be opened, so it's hard to say for sure.) Incidentally, in one case the overpressure valve steamed away for quite some time, but there was no collateral damage. Lucky there.

In spite of the claims for reliability of Jaeger pstats, after the second one failed I decided to see what else might be out there. Not much that can be called reliable, is what I discovered. Most of the small ones are said to be less reliable than the Jaeger. While the Sirai pstat is rated for high currents, it has a reputation of gradually getting larger deadband between on and off pressures because of the teflon diaphragm hardening. Still, I went with the Sirai because the Jaeger didn't seem to be able to handle the current.

The big question was, would the Sirai fit where the Jaeger had been? No, but yes. Stafano was a lot of help here, pointing out that since my machine was plumbed in I could dispense with the water container, giving lots more space. And, he was able to get the smaller 20 amp Sirai version rather than the 30 amp one. So, I put it in, and here are before and after pics (taken two years apart). At this point it works perfectly, of course.

Incidentally, taking out the water container and its shelf reduced vibration noise when the pump is running. A little Molefoam to pad the cup-warming tray on top and it purrs like a kitten.

No, but that's really tempting to talk to Stefano about. I've had my VBM since October 2012, and it's melted two brain boxes and a pstat since last July. It just ate the most recent brainbox this morning.

Melted Box: Was it just the plastic cover or did the box itself fail electronically? I had mine melt very early on and talked to Jim about it. Using what seems to be a low-temperature thermal plastic for the cover is ridiculous.

Pressurestat: Mine is 2½ years old and working fine... so far. I would say that with your history with it, put an SSR inline between the pressurestat and the heating element. The contacts would last forever that way.

I do like the smaller Sirai pressurestat as shown.

In most cases, there are tiny deposits on the Jaegers. How do I know? The reason is that if one descaled the inside, the pressurestat would work again as normal until more deposits showed up. I have not personally seen one yet where I cleaned it and it still failed due to carbon build up.

There are some espresso machines that use a PID and thermocouple to monitor boiler pressure. I just pulled out the thermocouple because the controller was not sensing the temperature. It was full of deposits - not from limescale, but from oxidation. I have seen limescale deposits affect these thermocouples before.

The bottomline is that there is a fine line to use soft water. I am not a water expert, but there are many times a cause and effect.

beanmuncher wrote:No, but that's really tempting to talk to Stefano about. I've had my VBM since October 2012, and it's melted two brain boxes and a pstat since last July. It just ate the most recent brainbox this morning.

I am sorry to hear about this. No one in the history of the Vibiemme double boiler replaced two brain units. Right now, we are 'less than' a 2% defect ratio on the brain unit for the machines out there. There is a cause and effect. Although several people will disagree and according to Stefano, the machine was not protected by any surge suppressor - it was only plugged into a timer which was plugged into a GFCI outlet.

I hate timers. Repeatedly, I have come across to many machines with electrical problems that were plugged into timers. In my opinion, there is a correlation somewhere.

Finally, the brain unit is a very new component (in the grand scheme of the 100+ year espresso machine history). In other words, 'PID technologies and innovation' in espresso machines are still in their infancy, and incremental improvements are always occurring.

I kind of feel like I'm hijacking Gerry's thread, so if a mod wants to split this off into it's own topic, that would make sense.

Given how my brainboxes have failed, I'm assuming that a component on the board overheated and melted the plastic. I'd agree with Randy that the plastic cover for the brainbox is relatively low-temp plastic; it feels very similar to what I used to use (I used to build custom electronics for a couple of labs a few years back), which aren't usually rated for high-temperature environments. If I still had an electronics bench set up, I'd open the first failed one and see what I need to replace. I know there's a board member here who has repaired brainboxes - since I don't have a bench set up these days, I'd be tempted to get these repaired and to hold on to them as spare parts.

I'm not sure if it's good or bad that I've "won" the hardware failure lottery as it were - I'm certainly not blaming anyone; I've simply gotten unlucky. I bought the Vibiemme back in 2012 (mostly on Randy's recommendation - and because he'd written the manual, which is a great reference) since it seemed to have the fewest teething pains of any of the home double boilers. I've had the machine on a GFCI power strip (bought two apartments and a machine ago, when the kitchen I had didn't have GFCI outlets), but on doing a bit of additional research, I should switch that over to a proper surge protector, since the outlet itself has a GFCI built-in.

Related to this, I want to note that Stefano has been nothing but great to work with across the various issues my machine has had. I know he's been in contact with you, Jim, about the issues my machine has had since July, and I want to publicly thank both of you for being nothing but helpful.

beanmuncher wrote:I kind of feel like I'm hijacking Gerry's thread, so if a mod wants to split this off into it's own topic, that would make sense.

Given how my brainboxes have failed, I'm assuming that a component on the board overheated and melted the plastic. I'd agree with Randy that the plastic cover for the brainbox is relatively low-temp plastic; it feels very similar to what I used to use (I used to build custom electronics for a couple of labs a few years back), which aren't usually rated for high-temperature environments. If I still had an electronics bench set up, I'd open the first failed one and see what I need to replace. I know there's a board member here who has repaired brainboxes - since I don't have a bench set up these days, I'd be tempted to get these repaired and to hold on to them as spare parts.

I had a brain-box fail on my VBM DDv2 (I bought a demo model right after v3 was announced). Mine is an older version than what's used in v3 but I think it's made by the same vendor. 1st-line replaced it even though my machine was just out of the 3-month warranty. They have been great to deal with.

I'm posting because of what I've noticed about my PID-controller (brain box). The brain has a three-piece circuit board folded into a U-shape that slides into a plastic box. The plastic of mine has melted/deformed just enough so it feels like I can't slide the boards out without risking damage like I could when the unit was new. From what I remember it looked like there is an SSR on one side and a CPU on the other. There was not any substantial heat-sink I could see. It wasn't confidence-inspiring but my unit has lasted almost three years, now.

Randy G. wrote:Pressurestat: Mine is 2½ years old and working fine... so far. I would say that with your history with it, put an SSR inline between the pressurestat and the heating element. The contacts would last forever that way.

Hi Randy! Glad to hear you haven't had any problems with the Jaeger pstat. Perhaps it's just coincidence that I have. But, I believe the VBM DD has an SSR already built in, doesn't it? Now that I have the Sirai in there, the SSR may not be necessary, but it's nice to know that the contacts won't be carrying the full current and will last that much longer. As mentioned above, I read that the Sirai failure mechanism is increasing deadband. Mine is just over 0.2 bar out of the box. Since it's only for steam, I could live with double that, maybe more. Fingers crossed.

beanmuncher wrote:I kind of feel like I'm hijacking Gerry's thread, so if a mod wants to split this off into it's own topic, that would make sense.

Beanmuncher, I don't feel it's hijacked at all. I'm happy to read your comments and might not have seen them otherwise. I didn't find much recent traffic about the VBM DD before I posted this thread, so it's good to hear from other owners.

beanmuncher wrote: Given how my brainboxes have failed, I'm assuming that a component on the board overheated and melted the plastic.

Hey! A light bulb just went off. I wonder if you folks with failed brains have a lot of cups on the warming tray? It seems to be an overheating problem, and the only cooling air flow is through the grate in the cup warming tray. If you cover it with lots of cups, less cooling. I'm only making a shot or two for myself, so there is lots of open space on my tray. I agree the SSR is probably adding a fair amount of heat to a sensitive spot, but maybe it's acceptable if there is enough air flow.