Hoping someone might have an idea where Cimbali put the gicleur (aka jet or injector) - essentially a flow restrictor on the older Cimbali junior pourover model?

On the plumbed in DT models, the jet is shown as being close to the flow meter or OPV valve. But the hydraulic parts diagram for the pourover (tank) model doesn't appear to have the jet anywhere. Asked my local Cimbali dealer and they didn't know either. So I might as well try to locate it, rather than paying them to randomly search for it at shop rates.

Any ideas?



This is the hydraulic diagram for the volumetric (DT) model. The jets are indicated by the red arrows. Cimbali part no. 491-173-006 or 903-143-000:





And the hydraulic diagram for the newer pourover (S) model. I actually have an older, circa 1998 pourover model that is slightly different but couldn't find an exploded parts diagram for the older version. Nonetheless, I can't see the jet in the water path here or locate it on the actual machine in front of me.




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Hello:

Mmmthatsme wrote: ... where Cimbali put the gicleur ...
... on the older Cimbali junior pourover model?

If my (plumbed in) ca. 2000 Cimbali Junior D/1 is anything to go by, there is no gicleur installed in these machines.

I used a repurposed gas fitting, it's basically a gicleur for bottled gas and more or less like the ones used in carburators.
I believe the name gicleur comes from the automotive industry (carburators mainly) but I have heard them called injectors in Diesel engines.
In the gas appliance industry they are usually known as injectors, but the term varies from country to country.

I'm sorry but I did not take photos and can't make myself the time to take it apart now, but here's a photo of one similar to the one I used:



You have to get one that (if I recall correctly) has (3mm?) threading and a short head.

I inserted it here:



One end of the 591-053-000 part is thereaded into the grouphead and the other end receives one end of the 442-514-000 part.

You need a gas fitting with a hexagonal head that fits inside the end of the 591-053-000 part (IIRC, OD 5mm) and a thread that (once the inside of the tubing is threaded) will screw into the 442-514-000 part, where you fix it with a wee dab of high temp Loctite with no worries as it will not come into contact with the brew water.

Now, the trick is to get the fitting's hole to the right size as you don't want to mess up the D/1s hydraulics.
I think I resized it so as to reduce the original size (of the piping's ID) by roughly 30/35%, but I cannot recall.
It ended up being a trial and error thing.

Mmmthatsme wrote: Any ideas?

This one? 8^D !

Hope this helps, it is a rather straightforward thing if you have already taken the D/1 apart but feel free to ask if in doubt about anything.
The usual caveats apply: water and electricity are a very bad mix - be very careful and if you don't know how to do it, get some one who does to help you out.

Cheers,

CIV

Thank you for the reply.

I'm perplexed because it would be unusual to find an espresso machine that didn't have some kind of flow restriction in the brew path. And a previous Cimbali Junior that I owned (approx 2005 vintage) did have a 0.8 mm jet, which I swapped out for a 0.5 mm part.

But I can't find a jet on the 1998 vibe/tank machine I have in front of me and it sounds like you didn't find one on your 2000 machine either.

I'm trying to find the point in the brew path which is most restricted, which would be the gicleur, if there is one. If there isn't a gicleur, Cimbali must have used some other method to restrict flow, a capillary tube, restrictive filter or something but it isn't obvious to me what or where that is. If the flow was unrestricted @ 8 - 12 bar it would be rather hard to avoid channeling the puck.





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Hello:

Mmmthatsme wrote:Thank you for the reply.

You're welcome.

Mmmthatsme wrote: ... didn't find one on your 2000 machine ...

Quite so.

Mmmthatsme wrote: ... must have used some other method to restrict flow ...

No, not necessarily.

I recall reading somewhere (probably here at HB) that these Cimbali Juniors (and other similar machines) had no restriction in place because they are vibratory pump units where the ramp up is slower than with rotary pump units but still maybe not slow enough so as to prevent channeling. Usually it's also a cost cutting measure.

Putting that restrictor in line reduced the flow/ramp and (what I percieved as) channeling.

Do bear in mind that a great number of Cimbali parts and their corresponding numbers are shared among most of their machines and that a particular M21 or D/1 is not necessarily the same ie: parts wise, as another M21 or D1 one from a different production run in the same year.

Cheers,

CIV

The ramp up would surely be slower with a vibe pump. There must still be another design element here to facilitate a degree of gradual or pre-infusion. Nonetheless, it does look like there is no gicleur.

Thanks for your thoughts on this.

As a footnote for anyone doing a search for Cimbali Junior gicleurs (jets), I found the glicleur on theJunior pourover (vibe pump) model when I was tearing it down to locate a brew path obstruction.

It's sandwiched between the group and the solenoid valve. According to my local Cimbali dealer the gicleur is supplied with the solenoid and is not depicted as a separate item on parts diagrams. One could debate then if this is really a gicleur per se or just a solenoid valve design feature. But whatever you call it, it is functionally the same as a discrete gicleur.

For comparison this is a 1.5 mm gicleur on a 1998 N. American pourover Junior. The stock jets on rotary fed Juniors are usually 0.8 mm (North America) or 0.5 mm (Italy). The rotary models do have discrete gicleurs.







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