A dance company I'm friends with was donated a used machine. They were told it works; they've never tried using it. I was asked to go over this weekend and see.

How would you check it out?

Looks pretty basic. Not heard of this brand.

Lift top cover, remove something, check for water in boiler, missing fittings, scary wiring, scaly horror? Turn on, see if it heats or leaks or sparks? Wait a while and start pushing buttons and tugging levers? Pull a shot?

They don't have a grinder yet. I'll have to bring mine. Also was going to bring a few tools, VOM, and some milk. And an extension cord, I know its 120v.

Looks like this is a Grindmaster Cecilware Espressimo 2450. A US company, I found info and manual here https://www.instawares.com/prod_pdf/gri-2450.pdf

Will be interesting to check it out.

Well, machine has issues. Had water of indeterminate age in boiler, boiler heated until pressure gauge was in green zone, shaking machine to slosh water momentarily triggers the auto-fill light, pressing brew buttons results in click but no water, steam from wand is weak and using the wand immediately drops boiler pressure gauge from green zone to yellow zone, water drawn off with hot water tap is only 145F, drawing off 60 oz water didn't trigger auto-fill, etc, this is after about 45 min turned on. Dance company reports machine has been sitting unused for many years. So it's in my car and I'll look into it in the coming days.

Well, you can hope it's just scale, scale, everywhere. I wish there were a better, faster way to get rid of that problem.

I'm running out of room in the garage. Hope folks come to get Elektra #2 soon.

Anyway, I'm guessing scale + seized pump. But we'll see.

Confusing to me but fortunately the manual has full schematics including wiring and plumbing diagram.

This Grindmaster is very different from the Elektras I've been working on, although I suppose that's obvious.

The boiler autofills using supply line pressure. One of the wires to the water level sensor was loose/disconnected. I think that would cause the boiler to overfill which could explain the weak steam and failure to fully heat up (?).

The pump sends water through a heat exchanger then flowmeters then a solenoid valve that directs water to the group or to a drain line. The plumbing schematic doesn't show the flowmeters but the electrical schematic does. The groups are electrically heated, there is no thermosyphon. The pump was seized, but I was able to free it by hand. That could explain the failure to brew (?).

There is a very small pstat controlling a heating element. The heating element has two coils; one is disconnected and reads 0 ohms, the other is connected and reads 12 ohms, implying about 1400 w remaining heating capacity - marginal for this size boiler I'd think.

Schematics https://www.cpsohio.com/manual_download ... al=CRA0383

There doesn't seem to be any way to remove the steel panels, as the machine doesn't have a heavy steel frame - the panels seem to be the frame. That's going to make things cramped to work on.

I am getting the feeling I'm not going to love working on this machine.

Autofill now works, boiler heats to working pressure (takes a long time to warm up - 2 gal boiler but only 1200 watt element), steam wand works correctly, hot water tap works. Group electrical heaters work. Fixed a small leak at flowmeters. Another small leak at pump return yet to be dealt with.

Main issue I'm currently dealing with is that pushing brew button on control pad results in the led light for button "on", a solenoid click, but no brew water and pump motor not turning on. I did unseize the pump. Disconnected leads to motor and there's no voltage when brew button is pushed. That's on either control pad.

So next I'll rig up a manual switch to energize the motor and verify the motor is good. Then I'll figure out why pushibg brew buttons doesn't power on the motor. The control box is not that accessible, unfortunately.

You mean the light comes on on the brew selector panel? The electric diagram shows this as G (green) light.

If that's the case, then there should also be voltage between the pump terminals. Otherwise, either of the leading wires is pinched/broken.... Just a thought.