this was the morning....

although the behavior of the extraction was better/easier to manage, i'm still not able to get a dose into the basket and pull a shot that looks like it might taste good... And.. yes the shots tasted over extracted... i'd love to be able to take a quick movie of my entire workflow, and visible extraction results... but i think i've had enough.... at least for today...

i've been in hobbies and know folks with hobbies where f'ing around with gear and equipment is the fun part of the hobby. I'm in this to make and enjoy espresso... spending time with a piece of gear trying to diagnose why its not behaving the way it should is not something i want to spend my time on.. life is too short...

I may come back to this next weekend or you may just see it in the buy/sell priced so that someone can buy-in and purchase a new set of burrs, at a competitive price point and i can sleep comfortably knowing i didn't screw anyone...

Thanx for all of your advice...

Yes i tend to whine but usually don't give up...

just needed to enjoy my espresso for a little while...
.....
went back and heavily cleaned the grinder,,, did the marker test and made sure i barely heard the burrs touch for barely a moment.. (i think i let that go on too long before and pressed them together too heavily)

obviously my carrier burr is still misaligned...

i suppose the first step is to rotate the burr 120 degrees, retork, retest... stop if it looks good, otherwise repeat.. then ?...

...and (actually times 2)

the wiped part of the carrier burr followed the move on the carrier... implying that the burr itself has a high spot...

for folks in the know, would you agree?

which would tell me, either shim the burr in the carrier (elevate the lower spots... or buy another set of burrs... red speed etc...

thoughts?

Finally took the 2 hours to f around with shimming the carrier burr. After way more layers of foil than I expected, I did get to a consistent wipe across the carrier burr. I'm back to grinding the coffees I was able to use prior to buying the Titus carrier. I'm grinding at a setting on the dial between 3 and 4 with these 'Turkish' burrs from mahlkonig. I can choke my newish gs3 MP as I would expect to.

I ended up having to use 12 layers of heavy duty aluminum foil on both sides of the screw opposing the low spot. And fewer layers in 4 more spots approaching the low spot around the circumference. That seemed like a lot. But it worked. When the shimming goes south (as I understand it does over time) I'm intending to shim up the original carrrier to see if I can just make it work. Kinda curious about that.

Anyway. Thought I would update this thread in case any other poor souls are looking for a documented journey.

The EK is not a fun machine to work on! Complete teardown with screws and careful how it's put together. It almost always vibrates. You need to lube the parts when finished. I always use care and torque driver when I reassemble, and I always center both burrs with feeler gauges.

I have found out which direction my Titus carrier is the most true on the shaft if my 43S and measured my chamber to be close to perfect with borrowed Titus tool. My EK burrs is not as true as some of my SSP burrs, it also seem a little soft so I feel like a high torque (not really high, my driver is 3nM I think?) might bend it slightly. I find I need to offset all my static burrs a tad to the left for it to be true to the shaft/carrier/rotating burr. I found this by trial and error with carrier with some thin plastic sheet between burr and wiper rubbing against static burr and it "biting" on one side of the burr consistently.

With the EK I experience that marker method is inconsistent. Do the exact same wiper test three times in a row without changing the burr and you will get three different wipes I bet. So you might shim and shim and chase your tail around. But it of course works as a rough guide. But it's not worth to fool around forever with the last layers if you get good result in cup.

I could grind fine enough with my stock new EK coffee burrs, filter roast VST baskets and profiling, so it should be possible with turkish burrs. Titus carrier feed the beans slightly slower, might change things a tad too.

Maybe you were lucky so that the misaligned carrier and uneven burr cancelled each other out lol. I also fix the burrs the three different positions to find the best non-shimmed starting point.

One method for the moving burr is laying the grinder on it's back, removing bag holder/spout and hopper, moving the carrier by hand from the hopper side with burrs almost touching and using something thin or feeler gauge to feel where the burr gap is the tightest and bites down on the blade or where the biggest gap is. I then mark the side of the burr with biggest gap with one symbol and the tightest with another so I know where to shim.

P100 is SO much easier to work on, and it doesn't even need much work. I have only found the best mountings for the burrs and static carrier and left it. No screws needed for opening up.

I only use my EK for filter now and P100 for espresso, that works nicely.

interesting perspective... I'm definitely happier with the grinder but i'm not completely sure i like it better than my old big conical... thinking i need to get one of the good single dose conicals and try it out... i'd probably just go back to the Compak, but i just burn through coffee with it too much..

Anyhoo... good to be past that adventure and back in the game

THanx for the reply

One last update for history on this journey. With some (now obvious) recommendations.

Whatever you do when you are shimming,
- keep meticulous notes as you make each attempt. Because if it turns out to work, you want to be able to repeat that same configuration without having work through the trial and error.
- mark your burr and carrier so there's never a doubt about positioning.
- keep your records in a known safe place.

The last post I had above got the grinder to a great place. But. After 3 months it went out of alignment again. One should plan for that. Out of frustration I got on the waiting list for a flat max. In the next month I decided to reshim the ek. It took 20 minutes this time. And I kept records of what I did. I've been using it again now for 3 months. My flat max arrived last week and it's still in the box. Don't know if I care anymore. Doh! I'll likely unbox it next week and see what it does in comparison.

Get the flat max out of the box, definitely the way to go