I've previously mentioned that my kit at home basically consists of the Sunbeam suite - the machine is the Sunbeam EM6910 Cafe Series and the grinder is the matching EM0480 Cafe Series. They often come in a package.
This guy Andy did a decent review of the grinder in the CoffeeSnobs forum if you want to know a bit more about it: http://coffeesnobs.com.au/grinders/24606-sunbeam-em0480-review.html.
Recently I had to do a small bit of home maintenance on this grinder, so I thought I would mention it in here as the whole process cost me $1.50, a few days waiting, and then less than 20 minutes of my time.
Basically what had happened was that my grind was gradually getting coarser and coarser and I was making my settings finer and finer until I literally couldn't make the grind any finer and all of my shots just looked like my machine was pissing in a cup.
As is natural, I 'Googled' my problem.
The first thing you should probably do before going to any real trouble is just give your burrs a really good clean. If you've kept the manual all the instructions are in it, otherwise you can find them here. In a lot of cases you're getting a coarse grind purely because your burrs are clogged up.
The other reason is that over time a bit of extra clearance can occur between the upper and lower burrs - machines can need time to bed-in, equally anything with moving parts eventually wears. Rather than getting the machine serviced for a fairly simple job, I found the answer on Ebay.
You can buy shims for the EM0480 on Ebay for 1.50 delivered, complete with the installation instructions. You literally just take apart the main components of the grinder, whack in a new shim or two, put it all back together and voila! your grinder is restored to its former glory.
Hope that saves someone a bit of cash, and maybe gives you some confidence in just pulling it apart and having a go.
Brandon.
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