Re: Repair of idiotic plastic pipe implementation on the Brewtus

In that case you'd have bigger problems - the water pipes in your house are
usually copper and espresso boilers and HX's are often unlined copper.
Copper is usually considered safe for water contact and for non-acidic
foods. If your water is acidic enough to corrode copper it should be treated
before you put it in an espresso machine.




"Roger Shoaf" <shoaf@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:1173732006.60466@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

I can see an advantage to plastic tubing, it would probably handle the
vibration better and if the water chemistry was such it might corrode the
copper and leach a metallic taste into the water.

--

Roger Shoaf

About the time I had mastered getting the toothpaste back in the tube,
then
they come up with this striped stuff.
"gscace" <gregory.scace@xxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:1173711590.574552.132720@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Hi:

A friend of mine was given a Brewtus that had been back to the Brewtus
dealer 4 times for repair of the plastic pipe connecting the feedwater
preheat (in the steam boiler) to the inlet connection to the brew
boiler. The manufacturer uses a plastic pipe, which appears to end in
a flare of some sort. The flared tube fits over an internal ferrule
in the fitting to which the plastic tube is attached. The flare is
captured by a nut that compresses the flare against a sealing surface
on the fitting. The design seems pretty sketchy to me because the nut
imparts compressive load to a pretty thin flare. There's gotta be
stress concentration in the corner of the flare, and in fact the
failure of the tube occurred precisely at that point.

I discovered that 1/4 inch copper refrigeration tubing fits over the
internal ferrule just about perfectly. I also discovered that a
standard SAE flaring tool made a flare that fit the internal
dimensions of the nut just about perfectly as well. The nut itself
needed the hole diameter opened up from 6mm to slightly over 1/4 inch
(I used a letter F drill, which is .257" diameter). The hole should
prolly get chamfered on the inside by a countersink.

We replaced the plastic piece of feces with copper refrigeration
tubing. The system was leak tight immediately. We then fired up the
machine for an hour to look for leaks. Finding none, we covered its
nether parts with stainless steel clothing and celebrated our
adventure by making coffee.

I do have to say that the service guys at the Brewtus dealer deserve
to get called out on this. The part is pretty lame to begin with, but
it's really inexcusable for that machine to have gone back 4 times for
the same repair. They are pros who I'm sure have seen this problem
before on other machines. Perhaps they have something to add here
that would help folks have confidence in their commitment to customer
service?

Oh, by the way, I liked the coffee it made. Functionally it's pretty
solid, but it could use more steam power. It's very easy to use.

-Greg





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