Looking at buying myself an E61 machine to celebrate 3 months non-smoking, in about 2 months....

I live in China and there are no shops in the village (1.5 million people) I live in that sell machines. Have been looking at Taobao, the local online store collector and found this Royal E61 machine that is for sale in a shop in Guangzhou (used to be called Canton) a proper city (15 million people I believe) that is about 4 hours from here.

Does anybody know this machine?

https://item.taobao.com/item.htm?spm=a2 ... t=6#detail

T

In my personal opinion it's a local manufacturer....quite sure it's a local manufacturer

Can't hurt to go take a look at it if you are up for the drive. Couple things,
1) The flexible tubing is giving me serious pause, as it should be stainless braided or equivalent.
2) I would find out what brand of motor and pump they used and check out the reviews on them. If crap, it might still be worth the risk as these can be readily replaced down the road if necessary, at pretty good cost though.
3) The same does not go for the heating element and electronics. I would find out who makes them, if replacements are available, and how much. If you can't easily replace either one down the road, then the machine will be pretty much dead.
4) My biggest concern if its a local builder, is did they use lead-free solder? Consider they aren't likely to tell you they used leaded solder, if they did.

HoldTheOnions wrote:Can't hurt to go take a look at it if you are up for the drive. Couple things,
1) The flexible tubing is giving me serious pause, as it should be stainless braided or equivalent.

It is a drain hose, typical of what is supplied with many plumb in machines in the US. The supply side is braided stainless.

baldheadracing wrote:It doesn't look like an E61 grouphead to me; as the dimensions and details look a bit off.

There is no visible vacuum breaker, which is odd to say the least.

Visible rust on the frame certainly isn't reassuring, either.

OTOH, I don't know how this machine compares in price to a typical Italian E61 box in that market.

It looks like a pretty well designed, dual boiler commercial machine. The grouphead looks smaller, most likely because the machine is larger than the prosumer double boilers we mostly see over here. The boiler temperatures are PID controlled which precludes the need for a vacuum breaker valve.

Like many commercial machines, this one a powder coated steel chassis. That is preferable to the unit body construction used for the majority of E61 prosumer machines. Some surface rust would not be uncommon.

Definitely worth taking a look at.

The boiler temperatures are PID controlled which precludes the need for a vacuum breaker valve.

Unfortunately, this is not so.

The vacuum breaker valve MAY be unitized with the steam boiler safety valve.

Seems to me the boilers are perfectly insulated just to cover the real raw material...which seems aluminum....and the heater top mounted it's a weird concept, once i even saw a "E61" group head made in aluminum but perfectly chromed polished, even the heater bolt were made in aluminum but painted brass color, i don't want to be silly but i will double check every parts of this machine, i speak for personal experience, good luck.

onthego wrote:It is a drain hose, typical of what is supplied with many plumb in machines in the US. The supply side is braided stainless.

I am seeing unbraided tubing going in and out of the pump. Could be fine, but having visions of sploding.

HoldTheOnions,
the motor it's seem the same brand used by Crem/Expobar in old models, at least it was the same 6 years ago, the motor brand logo is an upside down W.
The pump look like a Procon.