HG1 burr alignment... from the source themselves - Page 2

#11: Post by **drgary** » April 14th, 2019, 7:22 pm

I tried this alignment method as best I could and described above, and although my pours improved I am still getting channeling and sprites after doing RDT and WDT. My aligned Pharos does better. I will have to give it another try when I can find the time.

#12: Post by **OldNuc** » April 14th, 2019, 7:30 pm

The HG-1 alignment procedure is going to be a real time consuming process but will only have to be done once.

A modified Pharos with brass or hard aluminum bolt covers and a couple of VoDoDaddy mods is near bomb proof.

#13: Post by **Stanford55** » April 14th, 2019, 8:28 pm

Why are customers having to align something that should be--at $1K--ready to go out of the box? I'm thinking of getting my feet wet with hand grinders and purchasing the Lido3 for pour over, and I have the HG-1 in my sights, albeit far away on the horizon.

#14: Post by **drgary** » April 14th, 2019, 8:51 pm

OldNuc wrote:The HG-1 alignment procedure is going to be a real time consuming process but will only have to be done once.

A modified Pharos with brass or hard aluminum bolt covers and a couple of VoDoDaddy mods is near bomb proof.

Thanks, Rich. Yes, it's a voodoodaddy version, aligned by locking it down in the procedure recommended by Doug Garrott.

#15: Post by **NelisB** » April 15th, 2019, 5:18 am

pcrussell50 wrote:There remains some debate about which order of magnitude of alignment is required for conceals, versus flats. Flats seem to be much more sensitive to alignment than conicals, at least according to some accounts.

In the case of the HG-1, some people were getting visibly poor quality grinds ugly, channelly pours , and bad taste, until they aligned their HG-1's. This alignment process fixed that for a lot of HG-1 owners. So, how precise does it have to be, if you can get good looking pours and good tasted in the cup?

Same question applies to flats... If your flat is aligned enough to have good taste and good looking pours, how much more improvement can you expect with further alignment?

-Peter

It really depends on the coffee you use. At the moment I use Martella from Rome. A classic Italian blend with some Robusta. No matter how fine, course I grind, no matter how much I dose, the taste is always a beautiful traditional Martella.
If I use a Nordic style, light roast SO, my Robur is never accurate enough to make a balanced espresso. So be sure what your needs are. Light roasts are difficult. They need high end equipment to get the best out of them. Traditional espresso blends will taste delicious on traditional equipment.

April 15th, 2019, 10:56 am

No doubt. But my question is more one of conical versus flat. Most people might be satisfied for light roasts with a nominal runout of say 0.001" on a flat, yet might get a satisfactorily unimodal grind distribution on a conical with a 0.01" mis alignment. Or do I have that wrong?

This subject probably deserves it's own thread...

-Peter

April 15th, 2019, 11:29 am

I am one who believes that light roasts need 0,001" aligned flat burrs. And that conicals are not able to grind uniform enough, even when aligned perfect.

April 15th, 2019, 12:12 pm

Aha. Maybe that was what I was thinking of. I had it in my mind that there was something about conicals and alignment that was different than flats.

-Peter

#19: Post by **RockyIII** » April 15th, 2019, 1:41 pm

pcrussell50 wrote: . . . So, how precise does it have to be, if you can get good looking pours and good tasted in the cup?

That makes sense, but without a precise, objective procedure to measure the burr alignment, we may always wonder if it could taste even better.

I checked the alignment of my HG-1 using the prescribed method, and it is apparently less than or equal to a fingernail and an eyelash of being perfect, so apparently I don't need to make any adjustment.

Rocky

#20: Post by **drgary** » April 25th, 2019, 2:31 am

drgary wrote:I tried this alignment method as best I could and described above, and although my pours improved I am still getting channeling and sprites after doing RDT and WDT. My aligned Pharos does better. I will have to give it another try when I can find the time.

The rotational adjustment I had done was already pretty even. This time, I loosened the screws under the burr shelf for planar alignment. I moved the burrs to 0 point so they could barely move, which centered the burrs by default. Then I retightened those screws while it was still at 0 point. That did the trick after I loosened the adjustment to espresso range. Now I'm not getting the channeling or sprites.

Here are alignment instructions on the Lyn Weber site.

They are the same except for different graphic presentation on the Craig Lyn site.