HB wrote:I've managed to bind grinder burrs a couple times over the years doing just that.

On an M4? We are specifically talking about an M4. I've gone 720° finer on the worm gear at least once a week for 3 years without a whimper. The startup sound is the same. Caveat : I don't grind greasy coffee that could congeal into Loctite

Don't forget about our friend EspressoGirl who baked her M4 by running it for several minutes while adjusting finer.

I jammed my old M4 once when I forgot to turn it on when adjusting finer & there have been posts from others who have done the same. CC put that advice in their instructions because they had seen the issue before. Its good advice & I'd recommend that new owners follow it.

From my own experience the 2.5 numbers over zero for espresso grinding they recommend as a start point is a little high. 1.5-2 will normally put you in the ballpark.

It's not that I have to be right. Statements that are patently wrong must not go unchallenged. It's how we evolve reasonable recommendations.

Following the instructions in Paragraph 5 to the letter may result in over heating the grinder. This is good advice? There should definitely be a duty cycle warning of 30s on / 120s off included for grinders with a stepless adjustment like the MC4.

On a STEPPED grinder when adjusting finer, the grinder should probably be running. Definitely so if going finer than a couple of degrees.
On a STEPLESS grinder, when adjusting finer more than a couple of degrees [ 0r 720° on the MC4 et alia worm adjuster], the grinder should probably be running.
At no time should the grinder be run for more than 30s without an explicit duty cycle indication from the label.

When adjusting coarser, the burrs are unloading beans. If they jam, it's more than likely they would jam under normal operation.

It never ceases to amaze me that stating provable positions by some makes them dogmatic yet rote recitation of provably false positions by others is in karmic resonance with the universe.

I managed to jam my M4 within 30 minutes of setting it up by forgetting to run the grinder while making adjustments to finer settings a couple of times. I was using some oily canned crap that came with it as a test, which certainly didn't help, but I was not making huge adjustments. It started refusing to grind anything at any setting. Nothing came out of the exit chute, and it was just chewing up the grinds above the burrs into chunks. I had to remove the upper burr and clean a bunch of compressed coffee off the burrs before it would grind again.

cafeIKE wrote:Paragraph 5 is load of hooey. As long as you are not trying to go from press to espresso grind or the grinder is not very close to zero, one can adjust the worm gear 720° finer with the grinder off with no ill effect.

I believe those are the instructions that Chris includes when you buy the grinder from him (as I did).

And if Chris say it's so, then it's so.

Not so.

I bought an Isomac Gran Macinino from CC. Wish I'd saved the hyperbole. It ain't so.

Today, when you click on the Gran Macinino link you're redirected to http://www.chriscoffee.com//produ...inders/mcidlbblack. No mention that "we stopped selling this load o' ..."

Saint Christopher didn't sell coffee.
Or anything else for that matter.