Hello,

I have a question that's been bugging me ever since I've gotten the 4-hole steam tip for my Profitec Pro 600. Does the steam hole placement matter? By placement I mean how the holes are placed when the steam wand is submerged in milk. I saw a lot of videos on yt that showed tips that were arranged like a square, meaning 2 holes pointing up and 2 holes pointing down. In my case, however, the holes are placed somewhat like a cross, so there is one hole pointing straight up, 2 holes pointing E-W and one hole pointing down. Is it better to have it like a square or like a cross?

I'm asking because I have a very hard time finding a steam wand placement that gives me that gentle paper tearing sound when stretching with the current placement. I either get almost no sound or a very agresive stretching.

P.S. The holes are also pretty far apart on the profitec steam tip. I think it's similar on the Linea mini and GS3 machines.

This is the current placement with the Profitec steam tip

I switched from the 2-hole to the 4-hole on my Synchronika because I found that orientation with the 2-hole mattered. The 4-hole works for me without issues. I've not tried a 3-hole, but suspect it would work well too.

Do you have the same layout as me?

sergiughiran wrote:I have a question that's been bugging me ever since I've gotten the 4-hole steam tip for my Profitec Pro 600.

I get you. I have the ECM Synchronika (which is functionally equivalent to the Profitec Pro 700) and had the same question when I upgraded to a 4 hole tip.

sergiughiran wrote:Does the steam hole placement matter? By placement I mean how the holes are placed when the steam wand is submerged in milk.

In my experience it does matter. The orientation of the holes affects the circulation pattern of the milk.

sergiughiran wrote:I saw a lot of videos on yt that showed tips that were arranged like a square, meaning 2 holes pointing up and 2 holes pointing down. In my case, however, the holes are placed somewhat like a cross, so there is one hole pointing straight up, 2 holes pointing E-W and one hole pointing down.

Yup. I saw the same thing. My holes were in diamond orientation and the videos appeared to be in square orientation

sergiughiran wrote:Is it better to have it like a square or like a cross? I'm asking because I have a very hard time finding a steam wand placement that gives me that gentle paper tearing sound when stretching with the current placement. I either get almost no sound or a very agresive stretching.

I get better results in the square orientation than the diamond orientation.

I had wondered why "everyone's" tips were in square orientation when the tip is fully seated on the wand, while mine was in diamond orientation. You're the first person I've heard with a similar situation to mine. Now that I know it's not just me, I'm thinking that perhaps something changed in the manufacturing process of the tip.

To change my tip from diamond to square orientation, I unscrewed my tip by 1/8 of a turn. This decompresses the o-ring a bit and leaves a small gap that is difficult to clean, but I find it's a small price to pay to get better results in the cup.

I did get the o-ring to fill the gap better by removing and re-installing the o-ring. I don't mean to completely take the o-ring off the wand, just roll it down a few threads and then roll it back to where it should be, then install the tip. And when installing the tip, don't tighten all the way and back off, just tighten unit you get the correct orientation.

I thought about making a thin washer out of appropriate material to get a more snug fit to make cleaning easier, but in the end I found the cleaning problem is minimal and it's not worth the effort.

Glad to see I'm not alone in this matter . Also, thank you for the detailed response!

I will try to test both orientations today and see if I can see any differences. One thing that helped since yesterday was re-installing the teflon tube. That gives more consistent steam, even though the power is a little less.

Let me know how it goes.

Now you have me wondering about my teflon tube, because I feel like my steam sputters a little more than it should. Can you explain a little more about why you felt you needed to remove and re-install?

I removed it because someone here said that it increases steam pressure, and it's true, but it comes at a cost. I found that the steam pressure becomes a little too powerfull and that sometimes caused huge bubbles to be pulled inside the milk. The tube actually decreases steam pressure by a little, but it keeps it a lot more consistent.

After a bit of testing it seems like the square layout is actually a bit better. It seems strange to me that ECM/Profitec make them with this layout... I thought it was just a Pro 600 issue due to the "unique" steam wand shape, but it seems not...

Thanks for clarifying about the teflon tube.

By the way, I am getting my best results when I go for a soft hiss during stretching, rather than a paper tearing sound. This incorporates the air quite slowly though, so I find that I need to stretch for a longer time. The microfoam is extremely silky, but I often do not get as much volume as I would like.

This is very different experience than my previous two machines, a Mini Vivaldi II and a Silvia. On those machines, the paper tearing sound was ideal and I was able to make silky microfoam. But on the Synchronika, the tearing sound is a little erratic and while the microfoam is good enough for latte art, the texture is noticeably more coarse and the mouthfeel is not ideal.

After owning the Synchronika for almost a year, I'm still experimenting and making progress with my milk foaming technique. So far I have been doing either paper tearing or soft hiss. The next phase of my experimentation is to combine the two, i.e., about 2 to 3 seconds of tearing sound, followed by 10 seconds of soft hiss, then submerging for no sound. If I am successful, maybe I will post a video to explain it better.

I actually believe that the size of the Profitec/ECM tip makes a difference. When compared to the La Marzocco tips for example, our is huge. It all comes down to wand and pitcher placement in my experience. There's a lot of milk steaming tutorials on yt, but for each machine, the steam wand angle should be different, and it takes time to find it. For example, I sometimes get great microfoam with the wand at 20 degrees and sometimes it's undrinkable. Same goes for 45 degrees...