A quick question for those of you familiar with this topic...

I am wondering if filter baskets incur wear and tear (on the business end). I know (from watching extraction videos) that baskets flex during an extraction. I'm curious if the bottom has ever popped for anyone (boy that would be a disaster, kind of dangerous too), but more pertinently, I wonder if the holes themselves incur wear that would affect extraction adversely over time. Metal is malleable so I assume after tens of thousands of shots, a filter basket's bottom might have stretched a bit. I doubt any of this would be an issue for home users, but for shops I'm pretty sure they go through baskets regularly.

I don't remember ever reading anything about baskets having a duty cycle rating, but maybe someone has this information. I also assume the smaller baskets are going to be exponentially more resilient given their size.

We had one of the generic baskets in our shop cracked open literally at the bottom edge (the most outer edge if you look from the bottom). Nothing disaster and it just allows coffee grind to flow into the cup - we were wondering why the extraction looked wonky and tasted it - full of mud. Don't think this will ever be an issue for home use.

Not that this is worth much, but I use a convex tamper with my Strada baskets.. when I first got them they sat flush on the counter.. now they wobble.. I think this is from the convex shape of the tamper pressing on the grounds. I have no proof though.

^+1 Almost all baskets will flex/curve after a while, including VST...but not due to the tamper. Maybe that will 'break it in' for higher extraction yield

samuellaw178 wrote:We had one of the generic baskets in our shop cracked open literally at the bottom edge (the most outer edge if you look from the bottom).

A local cafe owner showed me an example of a split basket; I thought someone posted a photo of one, but I cannot locate it. So clearly they can fail over time. The threads Do filter baskets degrade with use? and Basket Wear Trivia raised this same point.

LukeFlynn wrote:Not that this is worth much, but I use a convex tamper with my Strada baskets.. when I first got them they sat flush on the counter.. now they wobble.. I think this is from the convex shape of the tamper pressing on the grounds. I have no proof though.

Um, no . . . it's almost certainly not due to your tamping, unless you are the Incredible Hulk.

A tamp puts 30 pounds of pressure on the basket, say 50 if you tamp pretty hard. This is nothing in comparison to what your espresso machine puts out. A 58 mm basket has about 4 square inches of surface area. And at 9 bar your machine is putting out 130 pounds per square inch of pressure. So by my calculations your espresso machine is putting over 500 pounds of pressure on your basket each time you pull a shot. It's 10 times as strong as you are!

So, yes, the baskets do deform from pulling repeated shots. Plus, I believe, the holes in the basket also experience some wear over time from repeated flow. I recall reading somewhere that shops have to replace them at regular intervals, but like someone said above it shouldn't be much of an issue for your average home user.

For more check out page 5-7 of this article:
ADVANCES IN THE STATE OF THE ART-AND SCIENCE-OF ESPRESSO

here's an old picture of one of my vst baskets that broke. from what i remember, this basket had 60k-80k shots go through it.

i think ive gone through two or three total now.

keno wrote:Um, no . . . it's almost certainly not due to your tamping, unless you are the Incredible Hulk.

I figured that wasn't it, but hey, I had to give it a guess.

I've worn out two HQ-14 baskets.