What's the term for coming into a thread just to disparage the product that everyone else in the thread owns? It happens all the time over at the CG forum, didn't know it was okay here....

If you had read all my posts then you would understand that is not what I am doing....

baristabazza wrote:If something fails on an e61 machine I have a dozen shops that are a phone call away with parts on hand. The recent replies on this thread really make me stand by my original comments. I'll take a e61 hx over the bdb any day. The la scala is 8 years old now (bought second hand and still in contact with owner) and all that has been changed is seals. Also my brasilia club was ~20 years old with the apparently original solenoid still working fine.

Maybe I'm naive, but I have no concerns at all about the serviceability of my machine. If you follow the various BDB threads you find plenty of stories where Breville stands firmly behind their product, many times covering issues outside the warranty period. My own experience mirrors this and I'd be surprised if 'sigh' is paying a dime for his shower-screen repair.

I finally had an issue a few weeks ago that was beyond my repair abilities; I called them up, described the problem, and a week later I had a new machine at my front door. I didn't have to beg, argue, or otherwise coerce the support tech. Compare this with most other companies where they look for any excuse to not support you. Heck, I had a car battery die once and by pure coincidence it happened to be the last day of the warranty. While I was amused with the coincidence, the sales clerk was busy trying to look up the exact time I purchased it on the off-chance that I was a few minutes outside the warranty period. I had to ask if he was joking, but no... he spent another 5 minutes looking through the computer records just to find out I had an extra 2 hours to go.

Jared wrote:Peter, are you sure you aren't looking at the item listed as a shower screen? The piece peeling/bubbling is the actual group head/shower head assembly. The plastic piece that comes off when removing the thin metal shower screen is not the item that is peeling/bubbling.

This is the item peeling/bubbling
http://www.ereplacementparts.com/shower ... 39486.html

This is not
http://www.ereplacementparts.com/shower ... 10637.html

Aha. I see the confusion. On my machine, it is the second piece listed by you, the $3.41 shower screen that has a bubbling surface finish. So far, I have just been sucking it up and living with it, trusting in Breville's claim of it being "food grade". When I get back home, I will now check my actual group head assembly for the same bubbling.

-Peter

What do you think caused the bubbling in the first place?

Randy

slipchuck wrote:What do you think caused the bubbling in the first place?

Randy

Not sure, mate. Preliminarily, (and this is bad news that I hope I'm wrong about), I'm guessing it's the same as non-stick coating on cookware, and it's bubbling because of heat from the PID controlled heater in the group... the thing that makes our BDBs play at many (many) levels higher than it's price point. Even though we're rolling in on six years since these things came out, this thing is still new and revolutionary. And to the naysayer, yes it's also true that Breville probably did not intend for us to maintain them ourselves to the degree that we are nevertheless figuring out how to. So there are still things we are discovering. Six years into a unique and revolutionary design just isn't that long. The whole purpose of banding together in a community of users, is to share what we learn and hopefully eventually overcome some of the issues we find.

baristabazza wrote:If something fails on an e61 machine I have a dozen shops that are a phone call away with parts on hand. The recent replies on this thread really make me stand by my original comments. I'll take a e61 hx over the bdb any day.

Re the bolded part of your post...
And if serviceability were my only interest, I'd have one too. Put the shoe on the other foot for moment... There is a reason people eschew e61hx's in favor saturated brew group machines, the cheapest of which is the $7500USD GS/3. And that is temperature stability. I don't know if you have been following the BDB since the beginning, but in multiple Scace tests, it has equalled or bettered the temperature stability of the GS/3. Basically, the BDB has saturated brew group temperature performance. And some of us, as appealing as a simple, bulletproof e61hx might be, don't want to be without that pro-grade temperature stability. By the way, I'm not just talking out the side of my mouth... I have not one, but two lever machines that I love dearly, that are simple and easily maintainable, that I'm sure I will have for the rest of my life. They require ministrations to manage temperature, not unlike an e61 requires, and even at that, you'll never touch BDB/saturated group-level stability.

-Peter

pcrussell50 wrote:Not sure, mate. Preliminarily, (and this is bad news that I hope I'm wrong about), I'm guessing it's the same as non-stick coating on cookware, and it's bubbling because of heating from the PID controlled heater in the group... the thing that makes our BDBs play at many (many) levels higher than it's price point. Even though we're rolling in on six years since these things came out, this thing is still new and revolutionary. And to the naysayer, yes it's also true that Breville probably did not intend for us to maintain them ourselves to the degree that we are nevertheless figuring out how to. So there are still things we are discovering. Six years into a unique and revolutionary design just isn't that long. The whole purpose of banding together in a community of users, is to share what we learn and hopefully eventually overcome some of the issues we find.



Re the bolded part of your post...
And if serviceability were my only interest, I'd have one too. Put the shoe on the other foot for moment... There is a reason people eschew e61hx's in favor saturated brew group machines, the cheapest of which is the $7500USD GS/3. And that is temperature stability. I don't know if you have been following the BDB since the beginning, but in multiple Scace tests, it has equalled or bettered the temperature stability of the GS/3. Basically, the BDB has saturated brew group temperature performance. And some of us, as appealing as a simple, bulletproof e61hx might be, don't want to be without that pro-grade temperature stability. By the way, I'm not just talking out the side of my mouth... I have not one, but two lever machines that I love dearly, that are simple and easily maintainable, that I'm sure I will have for the rest of my life.

-Peter

How does the BDB compare to the levers as far as taste in cup?

Randy

Very good, once you have it dialed in. For my levers, I use a professionally roasted coffee, so there is as little variability in the bean as possible, then I perfect my temperature management routine for that bean on the lever and it's usually pretty good. There will still be more sink shots when you do not have precise control of the temperature though.

The BDB I use for my own home roasts, where I am lucky to repeat the exact roast even with the same bean from the same crop. You are constantly dialing it in each time you roast a new half pound batch, and having the BDB's precise temperature control helps immeasurably with that process. You also get fewer sink shots due to mismanaged temperature.

-Peter

pcrussell50 wrote:Aha. I see the confusion. On my machine, it is the second piece listed by you, the $3.41 shower screen that has a bubbling surface finish. So far, I have just been sucking it up and living with it, trusting in Breville's claim of it being "food grade". When I get back home, I will now check my actual group head assembly for the same bubbling.

-Peter

Interesting... my puck itself hasn't bubbled. Seems weird that your is since it's basically just a hard plastic. At least it's a cheap repair.

I think the issue with the shower head, to answer another question, is from what I've been able to read the shower head screw is steel and the shower head is coated aluminum, so if there coating has any penetration then it opens itself up for galvanic corrosion.

*sigh* wrote:Interesting... my puck itself hasn't bubbled. Seems weird that your is since it's basically just a hard plastic. At least it's a cheap repair.

For the record, I'm not sure it's hard plastic. I think it's aluminum. It's light like plastic, but aluminum is light. And it's hard and "rings" like aluminum. When I scraped off some of the "bubbles" on mine, it looked like freshly exposed (i.e. not yet oxide layered) aluminum. Do you know for sure that the removable disc is not aluminum?

You're idea that it's galvanic corrosion is a good one. And the stainless screw passes through the disc on it's way to threading into the group head. Don't quote me on this, but if I remember my strength of materials classwork from engineering in college (25 years ago), certain stainless alloys are more reactive with common Al alloys than come carbon steel alloys.

-Peter