Burr alignment - best practice

tompoland

Probably a question for @DavecUK but open to all.

I’m after instructions for aligning burrs, both flat and conicals.

Videos would be great but really, anything that serves as a best practice instructional guide would be greatly appreciated.

There is a lot of information on the web but I have zero idea what is misinformation versus best practice.

Thanks

Cuprajake

Baring lots of specialist tools marker test and thin tin foil shims, but it’s not very scientific 😂

MWJB

Don’t the burr manufacturers who make aftermarket burrs supply any instructions?

DavecUK

MWJB Don’t the burr manufacturers who make aftermarket burrs supply any instructions?

Pretty sure they don’t…😁

MWJB

DavecUK Is that because it doesn’t matter, or because they don’t care about achieving representative results with their burrs?

giampiero

DavecUK Thank goodness🤭

Cuprajake

MWJB one would presume the burrs sold are true. As they fit multiple grinders that’s down to the owner to sort.

DavecUK

MWJB Is that because it doesn’t matter, or because they don’t care about achieving representative results with their burrs?

I would imagine the alignment of any grinder you fit their burrs into is not really their problem. They have to make the burr accurately and have it machined to mount on the correct areas of the carriers. Usually the rim of the burr is the datum for mounting.

MWJB

Cuprajake So alignment for that particular grinder would remain constant?

giampiero

I never been a fan of “burr alignment”, especially the marker method, the reason is that from the condition that the burrs are erasing the color, to the real grinds setting suitable for the desired brewing method, there are many rotation/ movement of the parts involved, so i always suspected that, unless we are working on a well made tight tolerance grinder, any visual result achieved with the marker method does not assure that the burrs will remain aligned once the grinder is set to work properly, maybe just my own good excuse to avoid the alignment hassle.😊

Anyway a dial gauge check could be the first test at least to verify the lower burr carrier parallelism.

Petre

MWJB tested in my grinder, mazzer major, yes. When I installed ssp I just kept the same shimming everywhere and that gave me perfect results.

Cuprajake

You would hope so. I suppose if the carriers are out then any burr fitted would also be out

But in most cases we can only test the lower burr as the top but usually doesn’t spin.

We’d all be sending samples to you to sieve 😁

wilburpan

This is the method I’ve used for aligning flat burrs, and the best one that I’ve seen. I’m not going to claim a lot of experience with aligning burrs in coffee grinders, but I do have a lot of experience setting up alignments for woodworking machines, and a lot of the principles are the same.

The key tips from this method is to do alignment one burr at a time, and to spread out the shim placement should you need to place shims.

The reason to do one burr at a time is that assuming that the bottom burr is the one that rotates, checking the bottom burr first ensures that the flat grinding surface is perpendicular to the axis of rotation, and then you can align the top burr so that its grinding surfaces are parallel to the bottom burr. Trying to do both at once is a setup for frustration.