Hi all! I took apart my niche zero grinder to clean on Sunday. I followed instructions to calibrate it, but I'm still getting extremely fast flow rate despite using same medium roast beans I used previously... (like the shot finishes in 12sec vs 30sec) - I'm not too sure if anyone experienced same problems?

Ignore the numbers. Grind finer till you get the shot you want, then adjust the indicator to where ever you want it to be for that grind setting.

After I cleaned my Niche, put it back together, & recalibrated it, my grind settings that I had been using were not the same. I had the opposite issue as you... my settings were finer after cleaning and I had to adjust coarser to get the same extractions. I reached out to Niche to ask if this was expected or if I messed something up in the cleaning process. They reassured me that after cleaning you will have to redial in your beans as the grind setting before cleaning won't be the same settings after cleaning. Just redial in and you should be fine!

If the burrs were clean and the burr-mounting bolt was sufficiently torqued, the grind setting shouldn't change significantly. Mine remained at the as-delivered point, confirmed as I marked the indicator ring position on arrival on some tape. A change of a couple clicks isn't a lot. More than that may be the two things started above or a difference in how "sticky" your fingertips are.

The indicator ring can move independently of the chrome burr carrier.

If you cal when dirty, there is a different zero point than if you cal when clean

What these ^^^ people said make sense about having a different calibration when clean than when dirty. [Edit] In theory, you set the dot position when the burrs are touching. You determine burrs touching by grinder dial is turned as far as it will go. Slightly dirty burrs mean some grounds or bean fragments prevent the burrs from fully touching. So if you "calibrate" with burrs dirty, the burrs are not really touching and you can get a different result than if you calibrate with freshly cleaned burrs.

[quote="beans+crumble"]After I cleaned my Niche, put it back together, & recalibrated it, my grind settings that I had been using were not the same. I had the opposite issue as you... my settings were finer after cleaning and I had to adjust coarser to get the same extractions. I reached out to Niche to ask if this was expected or if I messed something up in the cleaning process. They reassured me that after cleaning you will have to redial in your beans as the grind setting before cleaning won't be the same settings after cleaning. Just redial in and you should be fine![/quote

Similar experience. After cleaning and recalibrating my NZ settings are ~2 markings different. Guessing seasoning of the burrs or my "feel" for zeroing vs. factory personnel feeling could be different or maybe both. Anyway it doesn't really matter that the new settings are couple notches different.

I've always had the best luck following the directions in this video from the developer of the Niche: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y4lMoJqp-Rw