Hello everybody,

Please see this as a precaution, it could have been much worse than just losing 3l in one hour, just because the machine is used only between 8PM-9PM.
You can see here 2 Parker solenoid valves which get up to 20 bar pressure.
Parker strictly recommends using 4 screws to keep the gasket inside.
Slayer is using only 2 screws and that seems to be the problem.




And this is what can happen, in our case it happened on both valves on different days.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lXBpXw-9MiY

And right at the birthday party of "Jupe" (it is his Slayer) the 2nd valve was leaking.

He is a real party animal so sorry for the "noise" in the background.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HD5y8uLOfmU

And this is how it looks inside with the broken gasket



Jupe got many old lever machines so because of his fear of flooding the kitchen he got an alarm system which automatically sends a message to his mobile phone.
Otherwise the damage in his posh place would have been much worse.

I contacted the Slayer support and told them about our problem, I also sent some picture of the mounting (2 screws only) of the solenoid valve.
According to them it is the 2nd time that they see this happening and it was because in assembly the green gasket was not seated properly and eventually failed he is going to bring this up in the engineering meeting to see if they cant fix this issue.

We fixed our already by just drilling another 2 holes and cutting threads but this could be done by any service tech or so.
Pic. by Jupe

Thanks for the heads up notice, Frank. When I was very young a valve failed on our washing machine and did a great job flooding our house. After that my mother would never leave a washing machine unattended. I know that Reiss Gunson of Londinium emphasizes that if one wishes to plumb in his machine that they need also to install a fail safe alert system. When you think of this it's kinda scary. My Slayer is continually subjected to 3 bar of water pressure and the water is continually looking for an easy way through.

Terranova wrote:You can see here 2 Parker solenoid valves which get up to 20 bar pressure.

Frank - What's going on in the Slayer that bumps pressure to 20 bar?

yea, I told them it would be nice to have 4 screws on the valves three weeks ago during tech. training.
two is "absolutely enough" and If I loose screw during maintenance/service or somehow one of the threads get damaged - well, screw me.

P.S.: that 2 screws "trick" worked perfectly with older style solenoid valves with thick base, maybe that is the reason why they save themselves a 2 holes and 2 screws per valve during manufacture.

For Slayer it might be just their reputation, if you get wet feets in your kitchen because of your leaking Slayer machine.
In Germany there is 2 year warranty (by law) and as a distributer you need to have a good insurance to pay for damages caused by this.


Imagine what would an expert say after assessing the case who is to blame for the flooded kitchen, when Parker's specs are being ignored.

Slayer commercial machines tend not to stick around on a bar in my experience - constantly breaking down... I thought it was because of tricky mechanisms, not slackness like that. Would never consider one.

We were able to repair everything by ourselves on the Slayer.
The shot quality is still amazing, but now we ordered the new La Marzocco Leva 2 group for our workshop.
We are waiting since 2 years for the final release which will be next week at the Host.
Leaving tomorrow to Italy and I might pick up the machine directly.
This is actually "the machine" we ever wanted to have.

Is it true that multi group slayer that it only share a single expansion valve? So in case you inadvertently close the needle valve it's possible that the coffee boiler pressure goes quite a bit high.

Any word on their plans to correct this? Not great news to hear when you just had a brand new Slayer delivered