Hacking a dehlonghi coffee grinder

I AM NOW BACK TO USING THIS GRINDER FOR ESPRESSO IN THE MORNING, IT IS A BIT QUICKER THAN HAND GRINDING.

After 6 months playing with my Brasilia lady espresso machine, I could never manage to achieve the magical shot that pulls between 20 and 30 seconds. After a stern talking to by the smart people at coffegeek.com, I decided to buy a coffee grinder! I knew that a burr grinder was the only way to go, so off I went to Amazon to read the reviews. I decided start cheap and after reading countless reviews thought that the DeLonghi KG79 would be perfect. The day it arrived I tore it out the packaging set it to the finest bring setting and pulled a shot! 5 seconds later I was cleaning coffee tinted water from the kitchen floor, thinking that I had just wasted more money on coffee geekery! At this point I decided that this cheap little machine needed a make over! What follows here is the method I used to successfully hack my machine to produce a grind that can be used in professional espresso machines, this machine can even grind fine enough that my machine started to backflush. So here goes;

1. Remove the hopper lid, the top burr from inside the hopper. Then carefully remove both the adjusting dial for the grind setting(side) and the cup setting(front), I had to use knife to remove these as a firm tug seemed not to work(but please do be careful).

2. Next the casing has to be removed, turn your machine upside down and with a small screwdriver or knife, carefully insert the knife between the casing and the inner body. This was a little delicate so take your time as so not to break the casing, one free remove the casing from the body.

3. Now take a small phillips screwdriver and unscrew the four screws that hold the hopper assembly to the body. N.b, the image shows the hopper assembly completely removed, this does not have to be done, just let it hang over the front, as it can be a real pain to assemble the again due to the hopper lid safety button.

4. It is now time to remove the 4 screws that hold the shaft that controls the grind. Now let the hacking begin!

5. The hack is very simple, remove the key on this white shaft as seen below, I used a knife but if you have more time you can file it down. I did try to re-adjust by turning the shaft back but it is more simple to just cut the key off, and then you can still use the grinder to produce a coarse grind.

6. Step 6 is to reassemble, just do all the previous steps in reverse, being careful not damage your machine in the process. Once together you can dial your grinder in to your espresso machine, below is a picture of 2 grinds, the one on the left is the finest grind before the hack, and the one on the right is the grind I achieved a perfect shot with.

Please note that this hack worked well for me, and I accept that this will void the warranty of this machine. I do not accept any responsibility for your action if you choose to follow this hack, however if you would like a cheap grinder that is able to bring very very fine this maybe an option for you.

Thanks for reading this post, and just to note that I have linked to amazon for ease of finding this machine (and yes maybe to make a penny or two if enough people read it).

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