The S1 Cafe - Helping Your Espresso Dreams Become Reality

Hi there,

The second morning I had my brand new S1 Mini II, the pre-infusion chamber popped open. Luckily, I live just north of Albany, so I just drove the machine back to Chris' Coffee and they fixed it up quickly and professionally. Apparently I'm the first person they've heard of this happening too, so it's a pretty uncommon thing. No machine damage, just a loud racket when pulling my first shot of the morning and then some harried machine spelunking.

I will say it reaffirmed my happiness with Chris and his crew. They handled everything wonderfully and I knew I'd be taken care of.

Did the can rupture or was it just leaking at a fitting?

There's a ring clip that holds the back end of the chamber in place and that popped out somehow. The spring inside the chamber then pushed the back plate out and it made a really loud CLANG against the dividing wall just behind the chamber. Nothing appeared to actually break, the ring clip just popped off somehow. Jim (the tech at Chris') reinstalled the ring clip and played with it for a bit trying to get it to fail again but could not. Either way, they gave me a new chamber, tested it with a bunch of blank shots, and all's been well since.

Added a pic of the chamber to the first post. Thought I'd lost the photo, but it turns out google still had it. :)

If I remember correctly there is a "C" clamp that holds the spring loaded piston in the cylinder. Did that clamp either pop out of its slot or just plain break?

It just popped out. The techs at Chris' Coffee think it might have happened because the c-clamp wasn't seated properly.