Water Tank Rusty Metal!!

[hmo66]

Hi,
I had my mini for over two weeks now. Today I took the water tank for inspection & cleaning and noticed that the small piece of metal holding the white magnetic water indicator was rusty on the top and around the screws. When I touched it with my finger, rust came off to my finger.

I took it out and found it to be of poor quality where metal around edges and inside holes was uncoated. Even the screws were rusty. So I immediately threw it away and using glue gun placed a small plastic to hold the magnet in place.

Please check this part in your mini and report back.

[Endo]

Funny enough, the originally Mini (like mine) came with it glued in place (see the picture of mine below). But some people had floats that went bad. And when they did, they couldn't be replaced.

So it seems Chris may have asked them to make it removeable. But unfortunately, it seems the engineers are now out of the picture and the joe at LaSpaziale who spec'd these parts did a poor job. Just like the plated water inlet (in the same photo), where the plating all flaked off the first time I added citric acid descaling solution.

Come on LaSpaziale. Oversights like this shouldn't be happening on a $2000 machine!

Mini Revervoir Water Inlet and Float

IMG_2217 (480x320).jpg (28.88 KiB) Viewed 8262 times

[oton]

The advice of a technician has been: "this part is clearly low quality; the plating is just for asthetic purposes, so you better peel off with a brush or whatever; this way the metal plating will not get into the filter/machine/you".

[Endo]

You're right. I stripped the crappy plating with steel wool and it semed to clean up nicely! No more flakes to worry about.

Stripped Resevoir Inlet

IMG_2227 (480x320).jpg (29.94 KiB) Viewed 8253 times

[JohnB]

Citric acid solution will strip chrome if you leave the part in there long enough. Stainless or bare brass would be a much better choice in an espresso machine that will see descaling.

[a312]

Same thing happened to me with the small metal piece after about two weeks. Called Chris Coffee and they sent me a new piece, as well as new screws right away. No more rust now.

[Endo]

While a rusting part like this should never have made its way into production, it is nice to know Chris is quickly on it with a free fix. I hope all the new production models now have "rust free" parts.

I wonder if they have a fix for the "flaking plating' on the inlet? If they wait a year for the complaints to roll in as people attempt their first descaling (like I did), they'll have a LOT of deplating inlets to replace (a la Toyota method ).

Cheaper to "nip it in the bud", I always say.