I too have tried converting a Junior (same chute and doser, different burrs) to doserless, in the end i converted it back.The main reasons were grinds flying every where, excessive build-up in the exit chute, which then resulted in alot of clumping.In the end it made the process of filling the portafilter alot more complicated than using the doser.I suppose it could be done with alot of mods, but in the end i decided it wasn't worth it.

I found the doser to be full of small frustrating, easy to break parts, as is the whole grinder overall.Nothing like a solidly built Mazzer, in saying that i find it faster than my super jolly, same grind quality, and a better doser

kitt wrote:I too have tried converting a Junior (same chute and doser, different burrs) to doserless, in the end i converted it back.The main reasons were grinds flying every where, excessive build-up in the exit chute, which then resulted in alot of clumping.In the end it made the process of filling the portafilter alot more complicated than using the doser.I suppose it could be done with alot of mods, but in the end i decided it wasn't worth it.

I found the doser to be full of small frustrating, easy to break parts, as is the whole grinder overall.Nothing like a solidly built Mazzer, in saying that i find it faster than my super jolly, same grind quality, and a better doser

I find this to be a rather curious comment, but your wording is a little bit confusing (for me) so perhaps I misunderstood. I have owned numerous Cimbali grinders, first a Cadet, 2 juniors, 2 original Maxs, and one Max hybrid bought from Chris Coffee. The Cadet was purchased about 16 years ago, the juniors around 10 years ago, and the Maxs date from several years ago. Currently, the Maxs are in daily use and the Cadet and one of the juniors are no longer used, residing in the basement (I sold the other Junior). The dosers in these SIX grinders were all essentially identical.

The only mechanical problem I ever had with any of these 6 grinders is that the spring under the doser can break and can either be reused (albeit slightly shorter) or easily replaced with a spring purchased from any decent hardware store.

I have also owned a Mazzer Mini, which I got rid of after 3 months because I hated it, largely because of the mess it made on my counter in daily use. Others here report that the 56mm planar burrs in the Mazzer Mini make poor shots, but I was not as discriminating when I owned it nor did I own it long enough to form much of an opinion on it other than the fact that I hated the mess it made.

Saying that the Cimbali grinders are "full of small frustrating, easy to break parts, as is the whole grinder overall" is not confirmed by my own experience. I have found them to be very durable, almost bulletproof, and trouble free in daily use. And to say that the Mazzer doser is something better, which flings grounds all over the place (especially to the left), unless modified, is total nonsense.

ken

David R. wrote:I found the doser to be full of small frustrating, easy to break parts, as is the whole grinder overall.Nothing like a solidly built Mazzer, in saying that i find it faster than my super jolly, same grind quality, and a better doser

Yes, sorry, it was my bad wording.I meant the doser on the cimbali is better for me,has the same grind quality as the Mazzer, and a better doser than the Mazzer.Although i still think the cimbali Jr has lots of small easily breakable parts, i still think it functions better as a whole than the Mazzer.From what i've heard the higher end Cimbalis (max etc) are better built

I found the Mazzer to be very simple and solidly built, much easier to take apart, and with a few simple mods still a good grinder

kitt wrote:Yes, sorry, it was my bad wording.

Not to mention bad quoting (David R. did not write what you just said he did).

David R. wrote:Not to mention bad quoting (David R. did not write what you just said he did).

Yes, sorry about that too.I quoted from my post, so not sure how that happened - must be a bug in the system somewhere!

Hello Ken:

Ken Fox wrote:Excuse me for quoting your entire post ...

It's OK.
As long as HB's admin does not mind. =-)

Ken Fox wrote:... you have a solution in search of a problem.

I had not thought of it that way.
Point taken, thanks for making it.

Ken Fox wrote:... pretty good doser and it does what it is supposed to do ...

I'm quite sure you are right.
If anyone here at HB knows about Cimbali grinders and espresso machines, it's you.

Ken Fox wrote:... As to the popcorning/reduced grind quality ...
... there are simple solutions to that ...

Yes, I've seen most if not all of them.

Ken Fox wrote:... really and truly wasting your time.

Well ...

While I cannot but concur with you on most everything else, on this particular point I dissent.
You see, I don't do all this to make a living, it's just a hobby and like any other hobby I have embraced in the past, do nothing but have fun, spend a good part of my free time and relatively limited amounts of money on it. With it, I have been able to put together two passions I have from a very early age: drinking coffee and taking things apart to see how they work.

I have learnt quite a bit about espresso equipment, both from taking it apart and from what I have read/seen here on HB (a lot has come from your own posts), discovering some things that at least I have not seen mentioned before.

For example, while taking apart my almost new Cimbali Junior Max to see about how the doser worked and if it could be removed, I came across something I certainly did not expect, this being the same type of carrier wobble/play I have seen reported here on HB with respect to grinders such as the Rancilio Rocky, which I really don't think is in the same league as the Cimbali Max.

The intermittent burr touching detected as I was seeing how to zero it after cleaning it up confirmed it and I was able to fix it with some Teflon tape applied to the carrier threads 'a la Rocky'. Maybe it is just my Junior Max that has this problem but the carrier wobble is there, no doubt about it. Something not only completely unexpected but (in my point of view) unacceptable in as much as the Cimbali Junior is universally thought of as a commercial grinder.

As to turning a Cimbali Max into a doserless grinder, you may well be quite right that it's a folly to even think of attempting it. But it is also a challenge and as such, something I thoroughly enjoy.

Should I come up with something, be it success, utter failure or anything else in-between, it will be something to share with fellow HBers and maybe of some use to someone, if only as a deterrent should they want to try to do the same thing. =-D

Ken Fox wrote:Good luck.

Thank you, I'm sure I'll need it. =-)

And thanks for your input.
Really appreciate it.

Cheers,

CIV

civ wrote:While I cannot but concur with you on most everything else, on this particular point I dissent.
You see, I don't do all this to make a living, it's just a hobby and like any other hobby I have embraced in the past, do nothing but have fun, spend a good part of my free time and relatively limited amounts of money on it. With it, I have been able to put together two passions I have from a very early age: drinking coffee and taking things apart to see how they work.

CIV

Far be it from me to tell someone else how to spend their free time. I've done a lot of machine mods, but I've always done them because I had a goal in mind, a "shortcoming" I found in a piece of commercial equipment that limited my usage in a home setting. For example, a commercial HX machine that is temperature stable while pulling repetitive shots can be anything but stable when used in a low volume home environment. This led to my installing PIDs in my 2 Cimbali Jrs, and to developing a routine for using them with the PID in place which gave me better temperature stability for the few shots I pulled every day.

I don't see such a limitation with the Max grinder that could be fixed without fundamentally redesigning the grinder. As such, I think the risk of doing irreparable harm to the grinder exceeds any potential benefit. But that is just me.

As to "carrier wobble" or other defects, certainly any grinder can be defective. I do caution, however, that as hobbyists we don't necessarily really understand the design parameters of a lot of this stuff, and may easily mistake either intentional design or when a product is in fact within specs, because we simply do not really know how the equipment was engineered and why it was done that way.

As an example, I know of a case of an espresso hobbyist who purchased a commercial grinder which he returned because of "wobble" type issues detected with some sort of apparatus. I forget the exact details, but it got written up either here or on alt. coffee in some detail. The dealer later told me that they were unable to find any problems with the grinder (even though they refunded the purchaser's money), and in fact had sent it to the importer, whom I will not identify, who shipped it back to Italy and had their technicians at the manufacturing plant examine it, also finding nothing amiss and that the grinder was within specs. This is a well regarded grinder that I have never read complaints about indicating that it has poor durability or other design issues.

So, even if we view ourselves as being technically competent, we may not really know as much as we think we know when it comes to this sort of equipment, and "flaws" that we find may not in fact be anything other than a reflection of manufacturing tolerances. In the end I would much rather judge a piece of equipment by its real world durability and real world reputation (in use) than an observation made by someone who may or may not really understand the piece of equipment as well as he or she thinks he does.

ken

Ken Fox wrote:I do caution, however, that as hobbyists we don't necessarily really understand the design parameters of a lot of this stuff, and may easily mistake either intentional design or when a product is in fact within specs, because we simply do not really know how the equipment was engineered and why it was done that way.

A nice illustration of this is the historical origin of the idea that there should exist doserless espresso grinders. While a few users had noticed in the early '90s that a few home grinders (such as the Pavoni PGB) could be made to grind directly into the pf, this was never really considered a major benefit. However, in the late '90s one well-known poster on alt.coffee complained repeatedly that the lid on his Rocky's doser was too loose and that this was obviously a manufacturing defect (an assumption I found odd, if Rancilio had wanted their hopper lids to be tight they certainly had the manufacturing expertise to have made them so). The idea that "Rocky's doser is inferior" morphed gradually into the idea of improving, then eliminating it, then a general call for doserless espresso grinders, and finally into the twilight zone where Rancilio catered to this call by selling a doserless version of the Rocky for more than the doser version. Of course, the original argument for eliminating the doser morphed as well, into a highly questionable theory of how bad it is to have a few grains of older coffee in the doser.

My suspicion is that if all espresso grinders were doserless back in the '90s, hobbyists would have discovered instead the dual problems of (a) coffee clumping, and (b) boredom while standing by the grinder waiting for the basket to fill, then have invented the doser as a device that solves both.

Hello again:

Ken Fox wrote:... done a lot of machine mods ...

Indeed ...
Your Cimbali Jr. PID installation was the guide to doing mine.
Thanks for all that you've written about it, it was very useful to me.

Ken Fox wrote:... because I had a goal in mind, a "shortcoming" ...

So do I, maybe our concept of "shortcoming" is different.
My initial idea is to see if I can get rid of the doser, which I do not like, that's all.
I also accept that it could not be a wise thing to do and may just have to get used to having one.

Ken Fox wrote:As to "carrier wobble" ...

I don't want to stray too far from the original topic, but will say this: I only mentioned the Max's "carrier wobble" as an illustrative side note. That said, the Max (as I understand it) is a horizontal flat burr grinder, with an additional conical 'breaking' burr set but basically it's a flat burr grinder.

There's been loads of text written at HB about the issue of grind particle size, size distribution, fines, etc., so I won't delve into that, just say that at times it seemed a bit far fetched.
But then that's just me.

Independently of that, I'm sure that we can agree on the fact that if for whatever reason a grinder's set of flat burrs do not share the same vertical axis ie: cannot eventually meet on the same plane (within reasonable tolerances, no electron microscope needed) and on top of that, their not doing so is a haphazard event (wobble), the consistency and precision standards that we should or at least have been led to expect from a quality commercial coffee grinder will never be met.

So, while the 'a la Rocky' fix is a reasonable makeshift solution, I have seen other grinder manufacturers implement OEM solutions that address this specific issue, eg: a set of three or four spring loaded rods that firmly push the upper carrier upwards to keep the male/female threads tight against each other, resulting in practically no wobble. I have two other AR made flat burr grinders at home, one from the early 60's and the other from the late 90's with this type of device and they have no wobble.

Ken Fox wrote:... understand the design parameters ...
... mistake either intentional design or when a product is in fact within specs ...
... do not really know how the equipment was engineered and why it was done that way.

Well ...
In my experience with quite a few mechanical artifacts (from washing machines to cars), most of the time these aspects you mention are exclusively cost/profit related. If the Cimbali Max carrier assembly (for whatever reason) was manufactured with design specs indicating that upper carrier wobble (say, within +/- 1.0 mm) is acceptable, then for the manufacturer it will always be within spec, no matter what anyone else says about it.

David R. wrote:... historical origin of the idea that there should exist doserless espresso grinders.
... never really considered a major benefit.

Could well be so.
But I think that it depends on the kind of use you give your grinder.

David R. wrote:... if Rancilio had wanted their hopper lids to be tight ...

I am really not so sure about that.
The expertise 'is' there, there's no doubt about that.
But tighter tolerances (in anything) usually mean higher manufacturing costs.

David R. wrote:... selling a doserless version of the Rocky for more than the doser version.

Indeed ....
At the time I found that to be both funny and hard to understand.

Thanks a lot to both for your input.
Much obliged.

Cheers,

CIV

David R. wrote:if Rancilio had wanted their hopper lids to be tight ...

civ wrote:I am really not so sure about that.
The expertise 'is' there, there's no doubt about that.
But tighter tolerances (in anything) usually mean higher manufacturing costs.

My kitchen is full of vessels with tightly-fitted push-on lids - cookie cans, coffee canisters, etc. - all of which cost pennies to produce. W/r to the lids, which are injected molded, you only need to get the measurement right once, when you set up the mold. The actual cost of production from that point on is no different for a loose lid as for a tight one. I'm fairly confident that the lid size in the grinders from Rancilio, Mazzer, and many others was a design choice and not just penny-pinching.