christinescoms
Member
Hi, I have a coffee maker, which is your usual filter-based dripper, only equipped with a mill, so you have freshly ground coffee each time. It can boil the exact amount of water you set, saying you select 6 cups with buttons, pour water to the 6 cups mark and it boils water exactly until the tank is empty. It was running nicely for about two years after which a limescale removal was needed. I used a generic acidic mixture sold for exactly this purpose. Immediately after that, the machine went haywire, right now it never boils out all the water, leaving random amounts of water in the tank.
Now, I was thinking about how these recognize the time required to boil, had two ideas in mind: timer, factory preset like 120s for 2 cups, 180s for 3 cups, etc...but that doesn't seem to be very dependable, considering very different conditions the machine can operate in. But a dead capacitor in the timer would explain erratic behavior. The other idea is some kind of simple sensor down the boiling tube, to detect if water still comes from the tank or not. This seems to be more likely to me, especially considering it stopped working properly after using the cleaning liquid, the sensor could get damaged. I'm generally able to fix many home appliances but here I am lost. After disassembling most of the maker I could not find any clues, not even sure if the cleaning process is a culprit or it was just a coincidence. Does anyone have an idea what should I look for?
Now, I was thinking about how these recognize the time required to boil, had two ideas in mind: timer, factory preset like 120s for 2 cups, 180s for 3 cups, etc...but that doesn't seem to be very dependable, considering very different conditions the machine can operate in. But a dead capacitor in the timer would explain erratic behavior. The other idea is some kind of simple sensor down the boiling tube, to detect if water still comes from the tank or not. This seems to be more likely to me, especially considering it stopped working properly after using the cleaning liquid, the sensor could get damaged. I'm generally able to fix many home appliances but here I am lost. After disassembling most of the maker I could not find any clues, not even sure if the cleaning process is a culprit or it was just a coincidence. Does anyone have an idea what should I look for?