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Permalink Reply by Anthony Rue on May 3, 2010 at 3:59am

When we had an onset of mal-formed pucks, it was the first sign that the brew bottom assembly had started to crack. It's the big plastic piece at the bottom of the chamber, below the screen. It fails with a series of hairline cracks above the area where the solenoid attaches; we also found cracks around the center, where the piston comes through the bottom. As the cracks grow, the Clover no longer forms a proper vacuum and can't pull the coffee through the filter-- thus the pucks are either completely wet or else have a deformed ring around the outside. Eventually, you'll find that there's not enough pressure to push all of the coffee out with each cycle and you'll have coffee purged during the cleaning cycle. Finally, the cracks open up enough that you'll run a brew cycle and have coffee running out the bottom of the machine.

We've found that the replacement brew bottom has been unavailable as a replacement part for months, so we had our own designed and milled. Over on coffeed, someone from Trabant just said that the part is back in production from Starbucks, but I can't get any verification on it yet. As of last friday I had not heard that the part was available from either of the Clover parts distributors. Here's a flickr set about our own solution:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/daseindesign/sets/72157623961720894/

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Permalink Reply by Andrew Olson on May 3, 2010 at 9:57am

thanks anthony - i'll check it out today. I haven't noticed any coffee during the cleaning cycle but i'll keep an eye on it -

Anthony Rue said:

When we had an onset of mal-formed pucks, it was the first sign that the brew bottom assembly had started to crack. It's the big plastic piece at the bottom of the chamber, below the screen. It fails with a series of hairline cracks above the area where the solenoid attaches; we also found cracks around the center, where the piston comes through the bottom. As the cracks grow, the Clover no longer forms a proper vacuum and can't pull the coffee through the filter-- thus the pucks are either completely wet or else have a deformed ring around the outside. Eventually, you'll find that there's not enough pressure to push all of the coffee out with each cycle and you'll have coffee purged during the cleaning cycle. Finally, the cracks open up enough that you'll run a brew cycle and have coffee running out the bottom of the machine.

We've found that the replacement brew bottom has been unavailable as a replacement part for months, so we had our own designed and milled. Over on coffeed, someone from Trabant just said that the part is back in production from Starbucks, but I can't get any verification on it yet. As of last friday I had not heard that the part was available from either of the Clover parts distributors. Here's a flickr set about our own solution:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/daseindesign/sets/72157623961720894/

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