Rancilio AT

Hello everyone,

 

So I came across a Rancilio AT at the roaster I do service work for and I decided to play with it some and restore it having heard good things about the espresso quality.  I also happen to have an arsenal of old parts from a tech we bought out when he retired.

 

anyways I got the groups rebuilt and everything works just fine but I was wondering what some of you think about these machines, I know they waist A LOT of water, (about a quart per shot go's down the drain) but I also noticed the pressure for the group is really high, when I put my pressure gauge on the group it burried the needle! That's over 20 bars! don't worry I put a valve on the bottom of the pressure gauge to be able to relieve the pressure. I did the same thing on a Rancilio Lever and it capped out at 12 bars. The biggest problem I am having with the AT is there is so much pressure at the group it's leaking around the portafilter and I put brand new gaskets on it with no luck. 

 

So what are your thoughts and tips on this machine, is there a way to fine tune it? I realize I'm kinda at a loss and have no idea where to go from here.

 

Thanks Mat

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Permalink Reply by Keith Eckert on August 28, 2011 at 9:20pm

So maybe a line pressure reducer is in order? Dropping it to 2 bars ought to do...

 

Need to refresh my browser more often, didn't mean to repeat.

Permalink Reply by Mike Sabol on August 28, 2011 at 9:32pm
Ah Ha!  Thank you!  I didn't think about that.  Maybe that tube you were talking about at the bottom of the group will help split off the pressure.  Otherwise it would be the pressure reducer like a lever machine uses and that Brady and Keith have pointed to.

Mathew said:

pure physics! the surface area of the diaphragm is about 5x the size of the the surface area of the piston and the line pressure is about 5 bars so 5x5=25bars. That's not the precise math because I don't have the parts in front of me to measure the size for sure but there is where the pressure comes from. 

 

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