Yeah I got a Rocky too and have had it for about 3 years. I had this issue however it was last year and I ended up needing to replace my burrs as it was just their time to go. Did you clash the burrs together at all possibly dulling them? I watched your shot and they did look eerily like mine when I had the issue. Burrs (or possibly loose burrs?) almost have to be the issue if you can't get a tight enough grind to choke your espresso machine.

I'll be interested to hear how it turns out for you.

Dave

The coarse grind with Rocky seems to be a common problem.
Got my Rocky 2nd hand and the previous owner never had problems with it...
I cant choke my Silvia while my cheaper Rancilio Jacky (nifty little grinder that) does that with no problems. Feels a bit weird using the Jacky and not touching rocky at all. Just ordered a new burr set for the rocky and im hoping it will do the trick. Will apply the teflon mod as well to get it all right in one try.

When disassembling the top burr of the Rocky i got to twist the burr with the hopper still mounted with the three screws on because if i removed the hopper the top burr is too tight to be turned. I really gotta apply some strength to get the top burr off.

Maybe im having the same issues as Scotto since i disassembled my rocky for cleaning purposes before i first used it:

gtrman wrote:Scotto,
turns out i had misaligned the hopper with the burr carrier and was 1/3 of a turn off, but seeing as there is a screw in the bottom of the hopper, i could not get past zero. upon taking the screw out and realigning the hopper, my life became much easier.

Which screw in the bottom of the hopper is the issue here? I can only think about the 3 screws to attach the hopper to the top burr of the rocky. Or do you mean the big screw, number 34 on this scheme : http://www.mrcappuccino.com/servi...ckysch/rc4501s.pdf

Anyway, hope the new burrs will solve the problem here. Will report back when done.

Theres a good reason why Mazzers and other top end grinders are so expensive. My personal experience has been that cheaper grinder will either never work very well, or work OK for a while, but ultimately loose that sweet spot quite quickly as they age. Hence my comment very early on in the thread that I suspected your grinder.

The sad thing is that there are lot's of people out there using grinders that really arn't cutting it (pun intended) and have no frame of reference to realise there may be a problem, or that the cheap grinders tend to produce cheap results. Hopefully people reading this will realise that they should budget as much as they can reasonably afford for the grinder and it's as important as the machine.

Rocky's upper burr should move very easily unless there is tons of ground coffee in the threads or the entire assembly was cross-threaded. You may want to take a careful look. The stop screw is threaded into the bottom of the plastic hopper; my understanding is that this is a relatively new "feature" that wasn't there in older models.

My Rocky got the teflon tape mod and now happily grinds for FP and drip. Espresso is the sole domain of my Mazzer Mini, which I should have gotten in the first place. Much less headaches and better espresso.

Just wondering, what is the Teflon tape mod? I'm a rocky user and if there a way to improve general performance, I want to know how

By the way, I bought my rocky 1month ½ ago and it has the stop screw threaded into the bottom of the hopper.

Scotto wrote: Espresso is the sole domain of my Mazzer Mini, which I should have gotten in the first place. Much less headaches and better espresso.

Not all have the financial resources for that. alas And they're so expensive here relative to the us ones (taxes are huge here ). Hoping for a mazzer or macap deal on ebay... Until then i will have fun with my rocky (hopefully).

And, you say that you can remove the top burr without the hopper attached? Thats really weird because that is impossible for me. Maybe my problem lies there. Cant imagine it being wrecked since those burr carriers are virtually impossible to destroy if you ask me. Time to fiddle around a bit then.

If you have a Rocky with the stop screw, you will not be able to unscrew the upper burr and hopper together. Instead you'll have to take the hopper off first (three screws) and then unscrew the burr. With the hopper off, you'll see a long screw in the bottom which is the limiter - you can take it out so you can grind finer, plus it will allow the hopper and burr to come off together next time.