WTB: S1 Controller Board

[lrumanes]

I have an S1/V1 and think I need a controller board to get the steam boiler working again, but don't want to risk buying one for $400 and have it be another bad temp sensor or triac. Does anyone have one leftover from an upgrade they would sell?

Thanks,

Louie

[chas]

Typically the upgrades were performed by returning the control board to CCS and then having the upgraded board mailed back. For your option to be successful someone with an older machine not eligible for an upgrade would have to have paid retail for a new board and kept their old one. You may get lucky with this but the odds are long.

Also, the controller board is almost never the issue with this problem. Have you ruled out failures in all these parts?

1) Temp sensor
2) Triac
3) Boiler element
4) Resettable thermal fuse

You should be able to check all these parts out with just a cheap $10-15 VOM.

[lrumanes]

Thanks, I didn't realize it was a trade in.

[shrewd1]

I think chas is right here, I had a similar issue trying to fix the steam boiler in my s1, I took my machine to atleast 3 different coffee machine repair centres and all of them told me that I needed a new motherboard without first testing and diagnosing other faults that could cause my steam boiler to blow steam and overheat.
I think the problem was that these coffee repair engineers found it too fiddly to check the triacs/ssr or other bits as they are quite hard to get to in the S1 because everything is so tightly packed, The engineers are used to larger machines with much simpler layouts to work with.
In the end I had to change the triac myself which was causing the problem.

[lrumanes]

Currently I get no power to the steam boiler or thermal fuse after the group is heated, though this has been intermittent in the past. I've swapped the triacs and the group boiler still heated. I swapped the power leads on the triacs and the group triac heated the steam boiler, and later swapped the T1 and T2 connections on the controller board and got power to the a steam boiler the steam triac. All I haven't tried is swapping the temp sensors though I don't know if that would matter. The original problem was probably a fan failure, and the original steam triac was somewhat melted.

[chas]

Currently I get no power to the steam boiler or thermal fuse after the group is heated, though this has been intermittent in the past. I've swapped the triacs and the group boiler still heated. I swapped the power leads on the triacs and the group triac heated the steam boiler, and later swapped the T1 and T2 connections on the controller board and got power to the a steam boiler the steam triac. All I haven't tried is swapping the temp sensors though I don't know if that would matter. The original problem was probably a fan failure, and the original steam triac was somewhat melted.

If I'm interpreting what you have done correctly, it does sound like it might be the controller board. Though, if you can swap the temperature sensors, I'd check that out first. The original S1s and early V2's used the same sensors for both boilers. The current ones use a different sensor style but both are the same. However, there was a period in between when the new style was used on the steam boiler and the old style on the group boiler. If you have one with the two different types, it is still possible to swap them but it is more of a hassle.

[lrumanes]

I upgraded the temp sensor on the steam boiler years ago to the squatty one. I suppose I could try to see if they both have the same resistance cold or just swap the leads and see what happens, assuming temp is checked before any power goes to the boiler. Do you have a spec on what resistance should be?

[chas]

PT1000 RTD Temp Sensor Chart.jpg (133.56 KiB) Viewed 14953 times

[lrumanes]

Thanks Chas.

[chas]

If that turned out OK but before you order a new controller board, there is one more thing to check. Check that the control signal wire between the controller board and the steam boiler triac is good and that it hasn't come unplugged from the controller board.