*Result*

I will have a working Gaggia Baby for the sum total of €50.44 🎉

Currently it looks like this!

In the thread: the detail of how to do a repair like this, and why #RightToRepair matters...
First, why do all of this?

I have been the happy owner of a Gaggia Classic for years (it's fab), but need a 2nd coffee machine for somewhere else. The original Gaggia Baby is like a Classic with a plastic case

I bought this for €10, sold as defective, on Kleinanzeigen
Second, what was wrong?

Upon opening the machine (4 screws - easy) it was clear there was some severe corrosion at the *top* of the machine

4 t-shaped plugs connect power to the boiler - one was melted through, 3 seriously corroded
Sourcing direct replacements for these is impossible - nowhere sells them

Coffee forums to the rescue!

This thread kaffee-netz.de/threads/gaggia… suggests replacing them with ceramic (heat resistant) screw joints

€4.99 + €2.70 postage on eBay ebay.de/itm/3021960391…
Those haven't arrived yet, so for tests I stripped the plastic off some regular screw joints - this isn't safe for everyday operation but is OK for tests - it looks like this at the moment (red and purple cables, silver joins)
Third... it still doesn't work!

Doing that resulted in one step forward... the boiler would now warm as it is supposed to when the machine is powered on

But the pump would not pump, and indeed would do *nothing* - no power to the pump?
🤔 But if other contacts were rusted due to liquid leaking from the top, what about the switches of the machine too - also mounted at the top?

Turns out these were corroded - springs holding the contacts in place had corroded away completely
New ones from Komtrade ordered and delivered here within 24 hours! Impressive!

The switches are not identical - needs 1 of each komtra.de/gaggia-ersatzt… and komtra.de/gaggia-ersatzt…

€32.75 including shipping
But what cables go where? I thought of that... marked each cable before disassembling, so as to be able to reassemble it all afterwards...
At the moment I cannot mount the top casing back on it as I still need to exchange the screw joints...

... but with a little care I powered it up to test it.

Pump is fine. Boiler is fine. Water comes through at an adequate pressure and temperature. This is going to be FINE 💪
So that then is how you get a working Gaggia Baby coffee machine for €50.44

Had this problem been with pretty much any other part of the machine getting parts is no problem
This is why #RightToRepair is so important. Gaggia has generally been good with things like this (that's why I like their machines - the older ones in particular)

But it ought to be possible to do this with *any* coffee machine
And I understand that doing this, this way, is not to everyone's tastes, but that's what things like Repair Cafés are for - a repair café could easily do a repair like this, but would not succeed with machines of less repairable makes
Right, so, where's my espresso... ☕️

/ends

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More from @jonworth

22 Dec
Still shaking my head about this UK vaccine approvals for 5-11 year olds thing...

It's basically
YOUR KID IS GETTING HER OR HIS VACCINE SLOWER BECAUSE OF BREXIT

Oh and Remain people warned things like this would happen outside the EMA... not fun to see it happen though
And if you reply to this with anti-vaxx stuff: immediate block. This tweet is not about whether you should vaccinate or not!

And the root of the tweet is this:
theguardian.com/society/2021/d…
Oh and if you're going "all this delay is due to JCVI" - yes, it seems JCVI not willing to do this has not helped. How much is JCVI, how much is the approval? I don't know. But approval was delayed *due to Brexit* - that is beyond dispute.
Read 4 tweets
21 Dec
Rather than just a repair issue, this has been a fascinating insight into design of electric products, and points of failure

Somehow the person who owned this machine managed to get water into the top at the front - not something the designers ever thought would happen...
This has meant a part - the switches to turn the machine on - failed

Even getting switches out of the machine is not simple, while replacing anything else on a Gaggia espresso machine is easy
Getting spare switches is - you guessed it - also not so straightforward, because those aren't the part that normally fails (pump and boiler are)
Read 5 tweets
21 Dec
Past 24h on Twitter people have explained to me:

Brussels geography (thanks, but I lived 4yrs there and go all the time)

Schengen (thanks, but I ran a campaign website about it, blogged on it years)

Repairing electronics (my tweet was about how I’ve been repairing for years)
Timetables of night trains (thanks, but I work on this, and run @TrainsForEurope)

Mechanics of a Tory leadership contest (thanks, but do you think I’ve not checked it before writing about it?)
Really folks, I might well be WRONG with the conclusions I draw, but I’m not ill informed. It might be a fair assumption that I have checked the background!
Read 5 tweets
20 Dec
🤔 When does a Tory leadership election now happen?
Right away looks unlikely - COVID situation is too much of a mess. Would prompt accusation of navel gazing by Tories in a pandemic.
March also is tricky. UK might be emerging from the worst of a COVID wave, but then local elections and NI elections in May are in view. Plus Art 16/Protocol needs sorting by then.
Read 5 tweets
18 Dec
So this afternoon I wondered... what happened to those "Missing Links" in the European rail network Micheal Cramer used to write about when he was a MEP?

Cramer's 2015 map as a PDF is here 👇
michael-cramer.eu/fileadmin/docu…

And there's a 2018 update here 👇
michael-cramer.eu/fileadmin/docu… Image
In this thread I'll steadily examine each of the 15 borders in turn... and over the next few days! 🙂
First up it's border 1

Mõisakü 🇪🇪 - Ipiki 🇱🇻

This is what Cramer says ImageImage
Read 15 tweets
15 Dec
Right

Take a deep breath

Rather than just critique other maps, I have now made my own "Longest train journey" map - here it is

And there is a *huge* blog post to explain it! 👇
jonworth.eu/the-longest-tr…
I use geodisic distance to calculate the longest trip - basically the two points on the globe furthest apart nominally connected by rail, taking into account the curvature of the earth
Any such really long route is impossible without a bit of walking in a few places

But I have two workable variants...

Heavy rail and walking *only* is
Cascais 🇵🇹 - Woodlands 🇸🇬
11904.73 km

Add trams and metros and it's
Praia das Maçãs 🇵🇹 - Changji MRT 🇸🇬
11923.23 km
Read 11 tweets

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