Hi All,
My Cremina had just gotten the water up to temperature this morning and pop! Something inside shorted? and it tripped the breaker in the breaker box out in the garage. Smelled like electrical fire for a minute inside Cremina. I haven't had time to open it up and look yet. Anyone have a guess as to what went wrong?

Chris

Please open it up and post pictures so we can see it.

I'll have time tomorrow. Pics coming soon...

Yes definitely interested in what can go pop in a cremina!

OK. Here it is. I opened it up and everything looked fine. Fiddled around and discovered that the power wire to the heating element had come off. See photos of the culprit.

Removed bottom panel. Here's the problem.

So I've watched the Orphan espresso videos when Doug repairs the heating element. He doesn't have a completely separated connection like mine, and not having the best mechanical or electrical aptitude I'm not clear on how to repair mine. It looks like only the bottom of the post touches metal and there's a ceramic insulator around the post to keep the sides from touching?

I would check resistance across element connexions and the resistance between the element connexions and the base of the machine.

There could have been an internal element failure that created a short that resulted in burning off the external terminal. Internal element failure seems likely otherwise it would not have thrown the circuit breaker. What does the element itself look like?

Was there serious scale in the machine? That can cause overheating and failure. (Also under thick layers of CaCO₃ temperatures can get very high and bring about the reaction CaCO₃ ⇌ CaO + CO₂. CaO is extremely basic and facilitates oxidation of metals, it also removes protective oxide coats.)

I don't even know what that means! My fault, not yours! I saw Doug do some testing. OK, looked it up. I guess I buy a multimeter and check resistance (ohms). I test each connection to the base and each connection to each other, 3 tests. Right so far? What should the readings be?

Yes, and Robert was also saying accumulation of scale can cause a heating element to overheat. I created a new post on a heating element and can point you to that but it was tricky and you would need the remainder of the heating element to still work. Check continuity and resistance per Doug's instructions and if possible remove and look at/photograph the element to see if it is fixable.