I have owned a second hand Vario for a couple of months now and have been loving the upgrade in grind quality from my old conical burr grinder.
However...
Recently I have heard some strange noise as if the grinder is occasionally chewing through some very hard bits as it grinds, I also noticed the output per second was dropping (taking longer to grind) but did not notice any drop off in grind quality.
After a couple of days of this persisting I decided to roll my sleeves up and taking it apart. After partially disassembling and removing the burr set in order to gives everything a good clean I found a small chip out of one of the burrs (possibly not issue at all) but nothing else untoward.
I then chose to quickly try running it with the back cover still removed, I then noticed some sparking from the circuit board (and I think from the motor) video below. I believe this was infact the source of the crunching noise I initial began the strip for.
VIDEO
https://photos.app.goo.gl/DMQd4Mb16qfdAFos6




A little hunting around this forum has found a couple of circuit board burn-out instances on Varios so possibly this could be a result of a circuit board fault but I am concerned the circuit board sparking could be a symptom rather than a cause.

Interested to hear peoples thoughts.

Welcome to H-B!

The red-circled component is a fuse. It should be functioning as effectively a wire and definitely not sparking. Replacements might be available at your local ironmonger or electronics store. When you go in, bring both the old fuse as well as a photograph of the bottom plate of the grinder that indicates how much current it draws from the mains.

I would not be surprised if there is another fault in the grinder that caused the fuse to fail. If you do replace the fuse and it fails again, such as the grinder not starting, you'll have to track down what that other fault is. I don't know how those grinders are serviced in the UK, but Baratza, here in the US, is generally very good about service and parts.

There's a lot of things that look fried on the PC board and it doesn't seem to be the fuse that still appears intact. The fuse appears to look like a 2amp time delay fuse, the makings on the fuse will have a voltage rating of ~250v and a current rating that might have the letter T after the current rating number, 'T', meaning 'Time Delay'. The resistors above the fuse look burnt, hard to tell from the res of your image.

Q1, U3 and T1 also look blackened. I suspect something is physically broken inside the motor that is causing sparking and arcing.

If you own a digital multi meter and know how to use it, I would disconnect the power, disconnect the motor, attach the meter probes to the wires that were just disconnected and would go to the motor, plug the grinder back into an electrical outlet, start the grinder and observe voltage reading on the meter that is set to the right voltage, either ac or dc and see if the circuit board is still sparking.

A higher resolution image of the complete board would be a big help along with an electronic circuit schematic, if you can post it.

Motor looks like it might be a dc motor that was manufactured in Dec. 2006.

Thank you very much both, very helpful.
Sounds like I have some further investigation ahead of me.
I had already removed the fuse and checked continuity across it which was all good so not failed, worth noting that I think the sparking was between the fuse and its holder.

How easy is it to get a better look at the circuit-board, I am guessing I either need to remove the motor or remove the board itself.

I will get investigating further and report back, thanks.

weastman wrote:worth noting that I think the sparking was between the fuse and its holder.

I forgot to mention that R9 & R10 above the fuse might look fried.

Do the clips that clamp the fuse appear to be tight or might they be loose?
They should be tight. They don't seem tight enough from the pic.

Thank you all for the response, I have done a little more investigation as suggested and measured the voltage heading to the motor.
I get this to be 320v which seems surprisingly high, possibly some further investigation required on the board.

I suspect that the black probe should be plugged into the centre, 'Common' female terminal. I think it might be plugged into the terminal to measure current, amps.

I am remeasured with the correct multimeter wiring (sorry about this) and am still getting ~320v.
Could anybody confirm if this is the correct input voltage for the motor, it seems a little higher than expected.

I have also tightened the mounting jaws for the fuse and this is no longer sparking however the motor is still shorting.
I am reluctant to just replace the motor as I am suspicious that the issue lies somewhere else.

Any thoughts anyone?

You're measuring DC volts, is that what you want?

I don't see any way you can be measuring 319v ac or dc. Something's wrong!

Carefully measure your AC line voltage (NOT with the 10ADC probe input!) and post back.