So my work has a 2015 EK43 with a steel burr carrier that I am trying to align.

First, I sanded the chamber, but was unable to sand the carrier. The sandpaper wasn't working in steel and it was hard to get the sandpaper ring to stay in the right position while rotating.

I then did a market test. First the chamber:





So the sandpaper did a great job aligning the chamber. Now the carrier:





So I tried to add foil at 1:00 and 2:00 (not under the screw.) and got this result:



Then I added a little more foil around 6:00 and then ended up with this.



At this point I was confused cause it didn't look like the foil was making a difference. Added some more foil, but still had some marker left along the edges. I took apart the burr to see how the foil was being placed. Apologies for the blurry photo



My only solution now is to fold the foil over to make a thicker layer, but I'm worried I will overdo it with the foil.

Tl;dr: chamber is aligned, but carrier is having issues. Foil doesn't seem to work.

(Also before anyone asks: we don't have the budget now for a Titus carrier and I haven't found a machinist in the area who can help)

Can you get a dial gauge to measure the run out on the burr carrier as well as the burrs themselves or know someone who could do that for you? The measurements will give you some idea of the cause of misalignment (i.e. where the misalignment occurs...), which can be at different locations, e.g. the saft, the bearings, the burr holders, and even the burrs themselves.

The only one I know of is the Titus alignment tool, but I thought that only works for the chamber?

Your photos are all different orientations so it's hard to tell. It looks like it was working to me. You raised the areas you shimmed. By too much?

Unfortunately shimming is difficult. You could be out by .002" and putting in shims of .004" and making it worse. I use a micrometer to measure my shims and a dial indicator to see the runout.

The other thing is that if you shim even a little in one spot the burr will bend around the shim as you tighten the screws making a bit of a wavy taco and raising it in other places. It's better to have fewer shims.

When I shimmed an ek I put the rotating burr carrier in backwards and measured the runout with the dial indicator, so no need for the marker test. Not sure how others do it.

This is what I'm referring to:

https://www.grainger.com/product/4KU71? ... lsrc=aw.ds

You can get them cheaper on Amazon. With a bit of fiddling, you can set it up to measure the run out at various points. When I use mine I carefully spin the burrs manually...unless you know what you're doing you could get injured or damage stuff using it with the motor running.

I see. I'll look into a dial indicator as well as a burr alignment tool.

Should I use the dial indicator with all the shims removed?

Also when you say "measure the runout of the burr carrier and the burrs themselves" did you mean measure the runout with the burrs installed and the runout with just the carrier?

Yes, that's what I meant. Using it with the shims removed will give you an idea of the baseline alignment before you employ fixes.

BTW, there is a thread on HB from someone who was beta-testing his burr polishing system (with custom cut sanding disks), which provides a method for correcting (up to a point) flat burr misalignment. It worked perfectly on my Mazzers.

Sandpaper should work fine on the steel burr, it will just take a long time and you'll need to use high quality sandpaper.

I'll look into that. Do you know who posted the burr polishing system?