Home-Barista.com

Peter...well done!

If a picture is worth a thousand words, that video is worth so much more!

I'm with Ryan...when you return, pop that top and show us the mod.

Ok back home now. First things first, made myself an espresso. Then I took the top cover off for the snaps you guys requested.

These are pics of the tube routing, POST mod. I tried to label the needle valve port "out" and "in"

Sorry this first one is no help, but it shows my brass OPV:



Hopefully you can see where the tubes terminate. Post back if you can't.

In the second and third pic you can see how I capped the hot water tube, EDIT: I no longer have the unused water tube capped this way. I did something much more elegant and accessible to everyone. See post 184 below: Breville Dual Boiler "Slayer shots"? which normally goes on the "in" port of the needle valve. put the top cap of a spare BDB steam ball valve, into a $4 eBay ball valve that I am adapting to use in the BDB one day, and attached it in the standard "BDB way". Even better would be if you can route that tube under the solenoid to the right, and directly to the vacant, hot water outlet, and cap the bottom of that with the right sized cap (I'll find out what size later unless you beat me to it). Alternately, cut the Breville end off (save it and leave enough tube to splice back together if you want to return to stock), and cap the cut end with a fitting for 4mm tubing. 4mm tubing and fittings are very common out there.

OT: but in the first pic, you can see my brass OPV, and if you look really closely, you see that it is screwed down to the brass neck of the brass necked version of the Ulka pump I chose to use with the brass OPV.

-Peter

OK, in this pic, I took the kludgey ball valve-as-cap off, and threaded the water line, the one that needs to be capped, into water spigot boss. This alone would not be enough because water would just flow right through the tap. Ideally, you would take off the tip with the holes in it and put on a proper cap with the same threads. BUT I haven't been to the hardware store to spec out the the threads. So I cut a small disc out of some silicone sheet I had around for another unrelated project, and stuffed it into the bottom of the water nozzle to block the holes.

Water tube, new routing, into the top of the water nozzle:


Water nozzle tip:


Water nozzle tip underside with home made silicone disc blocking the holes:


A neater install, fully reversible, and doesn't require any cutting to cap the no-longer-used, water tube. HTH.

-Peter

Peter,

Thanks so much for the pics...they are so helpful for the "Slayer mod". I'll let everyone know how it goes for me once I'm in there. Might be a few days from now.

Thanks again!
Bob

The more the merrier. Nothing more lonely than being the only one in our group who has done this. Once a few more BDB'ers get on board, we can talk more espresso, and what flow profiles and temperatures work with what kind of roasts.

Next on my list will be to try another needle valve altogether, that requires more turning (so less sensitive), but is not like a micrometric needle that needs a LOT of turning.

I would run it in the same place as the stocker, and turn the knob through the same hole in the machine where the existing one is.

-Peter

eltakeiteasy wrote:This is great. Thanks so much, Peter! Today is dedicated to my first home roast session, but I bought a few extra parts from Phidgets while I was buying parts for my custom thermocouple build.

My goal is to add some simple software (when I finally get some time) to incorporate the below for profiling:

Mods for SR700? How did it go? We can discuss this in the roasting section.

-Peter

eltakeiteasy wrote:This is great! Are you noticing any improvement in the cup, yet?

Well? Hmmm... It's hard for me to say if they taste any better than the long slow, low pre infusion setting "Slayerlike" shots you do on a stock BDB with low pp settings. They sure look beautiful coming out, but I need more people to do this and discuss taste results. I'm afraid I'm just not sensitive enough in the tongue to give a firm answer. All I can say is that with the Slayer mod, the BDB pre infusion is through a low debit, but high pressure needle valve so the physical process is physically just like Slayer's "pre brew".

At this point I can only categorically say that this mod is for people who are geeky enough to want, "just like Slayer" as opposed to, "kind of like Slayer".

-Peter