Akin to the razor-and-blades model, capsule-based coffee machines are an endless grind of overpriced pods and cheaply made machines that you’re supposed to throw out and buy a new one of, just so that you don’t waste all the proprietary pods you still have at home. What this also means is a seemingly endless supply of free broken capsule coffee makers that might be repairable. This is roughly how [Mark Furneaux] got into the habit of obtaining various Nespresso VertuoLine machine for attempted repairs.
The VirtuoLine machines feature the capsule with a bar code printed on the bottom of the lip, requiring the capsule to be spun around so that it can be read by the optical reader. Upon successful reading, the code is passed to the MCU after which the brewing process is either commenced or cruelly halted if the code fails. Two of the Vertuo Next machines that [Mark] got had such capsule reading errors, leading to a full teardown of the first after the scanner board turned out to work fine.
Long story short and many hours of scrubbed footage later, one machine was apparently missing the lens assembly on top of the photo diode and IR LED, while the other simply had these lenses gunked up with spilled coffee. Of course, getting to this lens assembly still required a full machine teardown, making cleaning it an arduous task.
Unfortunately the machine that had the missing lens assembly turned out to have another fault which even after hours of debugging remained elusive, but at least there was one working coffee machine afterwards to make a cup of joe to make [Mark] feel slightly better about his life choices. As for why the lens assembly was missing, it’s quite possible that someone else tried to repair the original fault, didn’t find it, and reassembled the machine without the lens before passing the problem on to the next victim.
FFS just buy a Bialetti moka pot.
‘Right to repair’ is secondary.
Primary (in this case) is ‘right to buy a GD French press’.
They won’t ever stop making this stupid garbage until it rots on the shelves, especially the shitty coffee capsules themselves.
Strip it for parts, fine, but don’t fix trash.
Fresh roasted coffee degasses.
If your coffee comes sealed, without a gas release valve, it was deliberately left to get stale before being packaged. (e.g. ALL cup type coffee makers)
Otherwise the containers would bulge like Scandinavian canned rotten fish.
My Vertuo capules all bulge a bit. I live near sea level, don’t know if this is why.
I’ve had two Vertuo brewers die. The first suffered a power supply death and the second was the water pump coil going open-circuit. Neither were repair friendly, being difficult to open and most of the wire connectivity being soldered. Both were diagnosed. Neither were successfully repaired.
We have a k cup machine so I’m a huge hypocrite anyway but it’s for my elderly parents when they visit.
But. Seriously how hard is it to make coffee? I got by with a simple pour over for ages that required a source of hot water only. And made better coffee, required almost zero clean up (toss filter, rinse cone with same hot water used to brew) and cost next to nothing.
Maybe people have just only ever had garbage coffee that requires tons of sugar and cream to even be a little palatable and I probably envy them. I don’t think people like burned rotgut diarrhea inducing brown garbage water but I guess millions can’t be wrong. Why you’d pay MORE for that privilege is truly mystifying.
I have a coffee grinder (Virtuoso+) works great and I can choose the grind fine-coarse which does change flavour. I buy whole beans.
Why are people so lazy using this cup crap that is terrible to recycle and more plastics/aluminum involved in the machines. Additional environmental costs from the e-trash they make.
If George Clooney likes it, it must be good.
of course he likes money, don’t we all?
$20 Ninja drip I bought off Goodwill. Makes an excellent cup of coffee every morning and I’m the second owner.
ProTip: Measure coffee by weight and match to volume of water used.