When was the last time you took the tip off the steam wand? They will plug over time even if you purge and wipe it every time. I have also seen debris in the tips before. left overs from the manufacturing. Pallo makes a tool for cleaning the wand tubes, SteamyWanda. Get one. Take the tip off, soak it in backflush detergent for a couple hours, run a sewing needle through the holes to ream them out, soak it another half hour, ream them out again then put it all back together. If that does not fix it, you could have a scaled boiler. If your steam is too moist, lower the boiler level probe by about 1/4 of an inch as well. But get the first problem addressed first.

Thank you so much Dave!

I actually did unscrew the steam tip on two occasions to clean it, check it for blockages. Being so new to espresso, I'm making sure the cleaning techniques I establish are rigorous. I have also used the Palio wand and made sure the tip isn't blocked.

The machine is only a month and a half old, and has sat idle for at least 3 weeks, and my water isn't hard, so I'm leaning away from a scaled up boiler. (but then again, I'm the rookie here)

Is moving this level tube on the steam boiler a challenge? I really have no clue what I'd be doing, but I do have a few tools and can approach it carefully. I might shut it down and pull of the cover today.

The level probe is just a thick stainless wire that goes into the boiler through a fitting. The probe will have a single wire attached to it. You just loosen the compression fitting, slide it down 1/8-1/4 of an inch and tighten the compression fitting back down. The probe is usually in a nylon sleeve as well. Make sure the machine is unplugged when you mess with it. Then let it heat, then purge the boiler via the water tap. The machine will refill to the new probe level.

Dave, thank you very much for the help.I'll check and see how it turns out, it's reheating now. When I looked at the probe, it appeared to be "hubbed" as low as it will go into the boiler, prior to me doing any adjustment. I may have managed to get it in a 1/16-1/8th of an inch lower though.

Just steamed a pitcher full of velvet. Much, much better than any previous attempt. It looks like the boiler is averaging about 1.2-1.3 bar. I was surprised when I actually paid attention to the temp drop when I filled two cups off of the hot water tap. It was about 30 minutes into the heat up, from cold. But it took another 5-10 minutes to get back to north of 250, it dropped down to 217.

Thanks again!