To you Cremina and Cremina SL owners out there. I had mentioned in a few threads that I had some chrome flaking off the group of my Cremina SL. Olympia stated that they had some issues with a production run and to contact my vendor. This I did and they requested I send the machine to them for a group replacement. I just got the machine back two days ago and all looked good. Then this morning I noticed flaking occurring at four different points. These are all in areas that come into contact with the piston. I have some pics below. Is this to be expected? Have those of you who own either versions of the Cremina noticed similar issues?

Chrome should not chip under any condition, unless you really damage it badly or it was improperly plated.

Absolutely no flaking on my Creminas.

I haven't noticed any flaking of the plating on either my old or new Cremina. Sorry to hear you're having a problem with yours, and I hope it will be rectified expeditiously.

I noticed this in some Club's pics from sales posts.

My manual group head is pristine and I got it secondhand years ago. My sl grouphead has similar chrome weirdness at the top, I just didn't notice :/

I guess that kind of supports Olympia's claim that this is "normal" for this group head......but it doesn't explain why the regular Cremina groups don't display this kind of chipping/flaking at or near points of contact with the piston. Is it something to do with spring tension causing more friction? I don't recall seeing this on other spring levers I've owned like the Mcal and Pro800.

Peter:

It could be that the replacement brew head they installed came from the same batch as your original brew head.

I have no flaking on my club or cremina, both of which are quite old. I think you got two groups of the same production run.

[...] Have those of you who own either versions of the Cremina noticed similar issues?

I had exactly the same issue, and it started the same as your pictures show. Cremina (non-SL) group, manufactured immediately following the 2020 summer factory shutdown, which is coincidentally also when SL production commenced. The issue presented within a few months, if I recall. The vendor contacted Olympia, who shipped a replacement group. When it arrived the vendor swapped it over. (I was allowed to do it myself, but didn't want warranty issues.)

At the time the vendor mentioned that Olympia outsources the group-chroming process, and that QA is difficult. (I assumed that this is because plating issues are hard to detect beyond waiting for them to present, at which point you now also have a customer-relations issue. This was purely my interpretation though.)

Over the intervening 18 months the replacement group has not shown the same issue, although it's been 9 months since I had a really good look during a strip & service.

- ajs