That's a stunningly beautiful & thorough job you're doing. Re your holiday present of the pump and accumulator tank, I'd consider a little larger accumulator:

http://www.amtrol.com/pdf/reverseosmosis.pdf

I used a tank similar to this in the line after my flo-jet on my bottle system. All you need is to add a T fitting in the line with this tank, if you can find the older model they have a pressure adjustment valve (like a tire stem) above the diaphragm to allow better pressure adjustment. You can pull 10-15 shots with out a drop in pressure before the flo-jet has to kick back in and it is quite a low price. Note you do need to burp any air out of the water side of the system for any of these to work correctly.

-Cecil

Thanks for the suggestions Eric and Cecil. I'll keep those ideas in mind. Meanwhile, this is what the current setup looks like.

Flojet (with 3/8 inch tubing) to Accumulator to Pump to Inlet


And this is a picture of the finished interior.


I rewired my 220V outlet to accept a 3 pronged plug and also did a plug in connection for my motor. And with baking sheets placed under the machine and a roll of paper towel at hand... I turned on the Flojet. More to follow...

After I turned on the Flojet, I braced for the inevitable water works. Sure enough there were about 5 or so joints that needed additional tightening.

Everything skillfully mounted in plastic containers.


Today I turned on the power to the machine and... everything came on that should. The autofill worked perfectly. The groups and solenoids worked as they should. There were some minor leaks around various gaskets but nothing too troublesome. Tomorrow I'll connect the heating element.

See the cookie sheets under the machine.

As far as bench testing goes, there was nothing left to do - but get down to it.





I had to laugh at myself. I was thinking that I would have a perfect 25-30 seconds to take pictures of a beautiful pull of espresso. Well about 10 seconds into the shot (and 1 second after the above pictures were taken), the shot turn blonde.... platinum blonde.

One aspect that is still frustrating me, is the pressure stat. I can't figure out how it works. I've read the brief thread on setting the Penn, but it was no help. The heating element will click off at 1.7 bar, and I can't figure out how to adjust it down. Any help would be appreciated.

Something looks amiss on the leftmost spring/spring retainer and the next spring looks waaay too much compressed especially when looking at the thread discoloration on the spring stem.

"Hello, Ms. Simonelli, Cliff here, again, do you happen to have a pstat I could borrow while I take this patient to the operating room" ?

I'm off to violate my Simonelli... again (does that sound bad)??

Today I cleaned up the exterior panels. I used Bar Keepers Friend on all the stainless steel sections. It worked really well, but it takes a bit of elbow grease. In retrospect, I would recommend taking it all to your local plating company and let them do the work. They've got the tools, buffers and space to do it easily and it looks like new after they're done.



Here are a couple of aesthetic things I've been working on. I have a friend who makes pepper mills, so I asked him if he could make me some handles. I'm also a big fan of the brass eagle on my espresso machines, so I've been searching ebay for months, looking for the right ornament. At first, I wanted an eagle that would fill the entire back 3 panels, but I settled on a smaller one - it looks like it was an old door knocker. I'm just in the process of filing it down so that it lays flat on the rear panel.

Here it is, finally finished.

Before


And After




Thanks to all that followed this thread and helped me along the way. It was an incredible amount of work and I'm glad it's all done. All that's left... is the perfect shot of espresso.

I need information on where to buy parts for my 95 Astoria Argenta, Please advise
Thanks
Robert