Indirectly, yes. To state it more directly, I would say that the purpose of the push is to create a forward stream on the surface, and the purpose of the forward stream is to make room for the ripples to come. As Emilee explains in her video, there are other ways to create a forward stream that also

I did not have great success with the cast V2 burrs. I experienced frequent stalls and the manufacturer of my grinder (Acaia) recommended against using them for espresso. I am currently using the cast V3 and they seem much better suited to espresso. I'm still fairly close to the touch point after switching to a Weber Unifilter

You might want to compare this profile to those captured using the smart espresso profiler from other spring lever espresso groups

Risky? It's a widely accepted practice that I'd wager nearly everyone on this forum does. I also didn't see anything on the thread you linked about risk to grinding finer while the motor spins

^^^^ Excellent way to do concentrates. The revised Barista Hustle recipes also use this 1000 ppm as CaCO3 strength for both concentrates. Makes it all so easy -- add 20 ml of concentrate to make 1 liter and you have added 20 ppm as CaCO3 to your GH or KH. Note that where these recipes

Oof I'm sure that'd work but that seems risky! "Making adjustments to grind setting while motor is running"

From what I can remember of my Oracle (i had to get it repaired numerous times, one being my fault) - that sounds like normal boiler filling of a brand new machine and you've misconstrued it for something faulty. Especially 2 in a row, that's super unlikely. At least try and pull a few coffees

Try adjusting with the motor on whenever you go a lot finer

Out of the box issue with the DF54, unfortunately... When adjusting the grind from 75 to 15 and running the motor it appears that the burrs are 'locked' or 'jammed' and not spinning freely. I can't turn the adjustment collar past 65 at which point the burrs become locked and non-spinning. If I go back up 5-10 in grind

Nice job - pid install looks good but agree that it may not like the heat up there I did a restore on a very similar machine: "Astoria SAE Junior (CMA/Laurentis/RIO) Refurbish Log" The pid is not very useful for this machine since it's a heat exchanger You need to flush the group head before pulling a