Hey all, I've got an EG-1 that I've been using for several months now, and having read a lot of positive things about the burrs offered in the Ditting 804 (now 807) Lab Sweet, I went ahead and got a pair of Mahlkonig Peak burrs, which I've been made to understand are identical. I installed them and went through the process of aligning them, first by just trying the different positions on each burr carrier, and then by using aluminum foil shims, checking along the way with the marker test. As far as I can tell, I got a nearly perfect marker test on both the upper (stationary) and lower (rotating) burrs, and with the magnetic covers off, they also appear very nearly fully parallel, as useless as that assessment may be. However, I am absolutely unable to get anything resembling a grind fine enough for espresso. I've got it set to one tick before I start to hear burr contact and all I've got is grounds that don't quite stick together when pressed between my fingers, and which yield the kind of gushers that nightmares are made of. Does anyone have any insights here? I was coming to these burrs hoping to perhaps find the elusive true dual-purpose burrs, and I've used Peak grinders at work, so obviously I know these burrs should not be incapable of espresso. I've only been able to do about 1 kilo of seasoning but I have a hard time imagining that would be the make or break factor for being able to use them at all. I'll try to post photos when my morale has recovered sufficiently to repeat the marker tests, because, fool that I am, I didn't photograph the successful tests, only the failures along the way.

I thought those burrs had 2 holes equidistant apart. EG-1 carrier is three holes, V2 magnetic, or is the burr plate drilled for screw mounts?

It's drilled for screws as well. The original burrs (now DB3 BASE) are two-hole screw-mounted, as are the Peak/Lab Sweet burrs.

i think I am confused. I bet my EG-1 has 2 holes as well.

Are the lab sweet burrs less thick than the EG-1 burrs they replaced and so don't contact although parallel?

I didn't measure the thickness, but the burrs are certainly in contact, verified visually, aurally, and by the fact that one burr had to wipe the marker off the other.

Chert wrote:i think I am confused. I bet my EG-1 has 2 holes as well.

afaik EG1 burrs mount with steel dowels that don't go all the way to the cutting surface. There are there of them.

If you scroll to the DB3 BASE option on the linked product page, you'll see the original burr set from this grinder's release, which affix with two screws each. There are holes in the carriers for both - I screwed my burrs into said holes just last night.

Did you try them without shims at all just to see results?

Marker tests can be sketchy at times and it's possible to make things worse. Plus the eg-1 is a pretty well aligned/machined setup anyway so it doesnt really need much help there.

I did try both with and without shims, as well as switching the top and bottom burrs just to see. I've dealt with brand new burrs on a Peak before so I'm fairly confident this isn't just a burrset with an extreme break-in period. It's a real head-scratcher. The two possibilities that seem plausible to me are:

1. I got a defective/incorrectly cut set of burrs
2. For some inherent reason that has yet to dawn on me, the EG-1 cannot operate with these burrs

I could still be doing something wrong that's causing the problem, but I can't for the life of me think of what that would be. This isn't an issue of puck prep, the grounds are just far too coarse for espresso at the finest setting I can achieve without the burrs touching. I am all ears if anyone has thoughts; I've switched back to the CORE burrs for the time being but I'm just sitting on some really expensive paperweights. I do plan to try fitting them to a Peak at work, which should either confirm or rule out the possibility of their being defective.

It could be the angle of the grinder, tilting the burrs does have an effect on grind timing , to what extend it affects the grind quality is still a big unknown.

The eg1 has some slack within the the tolerance which needs to be collapsed to stabilise the system. The peak burrs have very little precrushing zone which could be why the beans are unable to stabilise the chamber in the early stages of grinding.