The General ACS Minima Thread

DavecUK Just for ACS benefit, if it were my company (which it’s not), as soon as I found out the machine had been delivered to the wrong address, I would have shipped a new unit immediately…I would not have wanted a customer to wait 6 weeks s to get their machine

Something similar happened to me years ago. Quoting my own post from a few weeks ago, with DFK’s reply, for context.

MediumRoastSteam Once a similar thing happened to me, with a Kinu M68 grinder. It simply got “lost” in transit. No where to be seen. The resolution was different: Christian (main person behind Kinu, a tiny german company back then in 2017) sent me another one straight away and said that, if it does turn up, to just contact him and he will have it collected from me. It never turned up. After talking to him a few weeks afterwards, he told me not to worry and he would take that with the courier - DHL in that case. Now, that’s service.

dfk41 You were lucky that Kinu had a spare grinder to send on to you. I doubt ACS have that luxury. What price was the grinder? Unfortunately a courier problem is a courier problem.

I have very hard water here in Berlin.

Are there any machine specific softening solutions anytime would suggest?

I’ve seen some resin ball packets that sit in the water tank, another that attaches to the water intake pipe.

Long term I’m starting to consider a filter on the water line, any suggestions? Reverse osmosis send too expensive and buying bottles seems wasteful.

mjswooper Long term I’m starting to consider a filter on the water line, any suggestions? Reverse osmosis send too expensive and buying bottles seems wasteful.

The one guaranteed way that works, is reverse osmosis and then add a touch of bicarb back. My machines all use RO water and I really don’t get problems due to hard water. As 90% of machine problems are hard water…I basically don’t get problems.

Just ran my first descaling with citric acid, 50g per litre (2litres), service and brew boiler. I’m looking at this water and it has a bunch of metallic flecks in it?

Also for reference, found some sort of grease between the e61 shower seal and head. Was giving a very weird smell, cleaned it and now fine.

mjswooper Just ran my first descaling with citric acid, 50g per litre (2litres), service and brew boiler. I’m looking at this water and it has a bunch of metallic flecks in it?

Also for reference, found some sort of grease between the e61 shower seal and head. Was giving a very weird smell, cleaned it and now fine.

Mystery, theres not really anything that can grind and make metallic flecks?

DavecUK

I was thinking the same… should I contact acs support? I have a video if you are curious. My theory is that its from manufacturing and it was settled on the bottom of the boilers, kicked up by the repeated boiler refills. Worst case could be stripping the chrome?

mjswooper I was thinking the same… should I contact acs support? I have a video if you are curious. My theory is that its from manufacturing and it was settled on the bottom of the boilers, kicked up by the repeated boiler refills. Worst case could be stripping the chrome?

The boilers are thoroughly washed out before installation, so it’s not from manufacturing…hard water affects/damages the chrome on the mushroom, then the descaler, can and does strip/loosen the affected chrome from the E61 mushroom. Perhaps it was this you saw.

Very hard water is a bad thing, you definitely need to find a solution to your water.

Thanks for the super quick replies. Does your answer change if the flecks are coming out from both sides/boilers?

mjswooper Not really, are they?

mjswooper Googling around has some similar cases, but im still pretty concerned. I had about 5-6x the amount in the photo.

I wrote that article…

MediumRoastSteam

This was from the service boiler, via the tap/hot water. Much the same was out the brew boiler/group head as well.

Whip the mushroom out to check. Quickest way

The boilers are stainless

I discovered flaking chrome on a mushroom in a Minima, picture on the first post in this thread. https://coffeetime.freeflarum.com/d/1016-acs-minima-with-lelit-bianca-flow-contol

Norvin Holy shit that is a lot of chrome flakes. Did the flaking eventually stop? I guess there wasn’t much left eh?

My Minima has been happily making great coffee for a few years now, thanks to help from this forum. This morning I decided to give its regular flush clean.

I put in the blind filter and with 3g of cleaner in it I turned it on for 10 seconds, then let it rest for 20 seconds and turned it on again planning for 10 seconds. However, it blew the house electricity fuse after 3 seconds and I had to reset. Reset done I tried again with the same result.

So, I gave up, thinking it might be related to the perhaps higher pressure of the blind filter. I took out the blind filter and thought I’d run it a few times to clear the cleaning agent from the porta-filter. Once again it blew the fuse in the house fusebox. It now blows as soon as I try to pull any shot, virtually instantly.

Might anyone have any ideas what’s causing the problem and how to fix it. At the moment, apart from the worry of not having a working machine, I’m concerned about a Sunday morning with no coffee!!!.

Unplug machine, pen front cover under group (2 allen bolts) check solenoid connections not wet or touching case..

If nothing unusual remove case.

DavecUK Just did that, and when I took off the cover I found the bolt at the bottom of the portafilter run off had fallen off! I don’t know how that could have happened, might backflushing have caused it do you think?

Reassembled and it’s working. Let joy be unconfined, Sunday morning coffee here we come.

Thanks Dave for the suggestion.

Java_avaJ I found the bolt at the bottom of the portafilter run off

I’m not sure which bolt you mean, do you mean the vent bolt? If so, it could just be vibration from the pump.