Hello
I just noted that my Europiccola shower screen seems different from what I can find on the internet as spare one.
Actually my screen has holes in the central section only, while edges have no holes.



Shower screens I always see as spare part have a small central part with no holes, with holes all around



My questions are:
is it normal? someone else has a shower screen of this type installed in his Pavoni?
could be a non original part (as I bought my machine used just one year ago) ?
could it affect quality of my extractions (by channeling water in the central part only of the coffee disc) ?
could be worth changing it?

alberto

It looks aftermarket to me. As far as I know, there were only two pavoni shower screens, those with a center screw and those without. I can only assume its not good for your extractions, since it directs everything to the center of the puck, as you mentioned. If your espresso tastes fine then its not really a big deal, but its probably worth changing eventually.

I saw one like it on eBay back in Jan 2012 and posted a picture of it on this site:

Perhaps your machine is that same one?

It is odd, will be interesting if anyone knows the story on these.

OK
I checked in Francesco Ceccarelli's site
It should be the original shower screen mounted on Europiccola since 2008

http://www.francescoceccarelli.eu/La_Pa ... 05_ELH.htm

Now I'm wondering what advantages can it take.

alberto

Good find Alberto! I always check Francesco's excellent site but somehow missed this one. That explains why you also find a different gasket for these 2008 and later models - I always wondered about that.

I'm guessing that it's an improvement, and may be there to help allow air to better escape from the space above the puck when the lever is raised. Robert Pavlis posted ( How to get rid of the trapped air inside the chamber) a while back on that, thinking that the blank space (no holes) in the center of the older style shower screen did the same thing.

Another possibility is that it tends to offset the tendency of 'donut' extractions that people often observe when using bottomless portafilters on a pavoni.

Now I want to buy myself one of those shower screens and see if it makes a difference.

if you will see differences, please let us know

I'm not convinced at all from this "new shape"

I think that there should be a better way to solve the problem of donut extractions than leaving the edges of the coffee disc dry

alberto

I don't think you'll leave the edges dry as the water will fill up over all the coffee if you leave enough room.

When you pull a shot, do the edges look drier than the middle? You could try carefully knocking out a spent puck and cutting it in half.

I'll check

I am also curious to know if this screen is an improvement or not. Never seen one like it on any espresso machine.

Maybe it's the pod version! -some smiley here-

One of the things that attracted me on the Pavoni was the full use of the vertical water column, compared to cheap domestic plastic toys that restrict the flow in some point. This looks wrong.