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Macap doser mods

LoveyLovey
edited January 1970 in Grinders
I currently have a chrome, stepless Macap M4 on the bench at home next to a La Spaziale mini. Whilst it is a fine grinder, I've found a few things about it which irk me slightly. Bearing in mind that this is a commercial style, dosered grinder and it wasn't designed to be grinding one shot at a time, I thought I could make a few slight improvements to an otherwise great piece of machinery to make it a bit more 'user friendly' for home use.

The three things that come to mind immediately are:
1- Making the doser sweep more cleanly. I know the Macap dosers are good out of the box, but I would like it better.
2- Modding the spout to enable more of the coffee to get into the basket, rather than on the dregs mat.
3- Stopping the doser lid from rattling when the grinder is going.

One thing I found was that when I went from the Giotto to the La Spaz, is that problem number 2 has been really exacerbated, as the La Spaz baskets are 53mm v 58mm for the Giotto. This was the 'problem' that I wanted to tackle first.

Koffee Kosmo made a snout to suit his Mazzer Major in order to reduce the throwing to the left of coffee (easily located via a google search). He also very kindly gave me a piece of aluminium sheet and some instructions so that I could make a similar mod for my Macap.

After sitting on this for quite a while, I finally started my project. The first thing that popped up was the obviously different design of the dosers. The Mazzer has a round exit chute whereas the Macap has a squarish one, as per the following photo. The exit chute also has a slight taper, which is hard to see in the photo, and made the design of the snout a bit more involved.


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Comments

  • LoveyLovey
    To work around the shape of the exit chute, I did a few measurements and made some paper templates for each side of the chute.  I then made a paper mock up of the proposed chute to try and simulate the angles and curvature of the front and rear sides of the chute. Finally the aluminium chute was fashioned, as per this photo.
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  • LoveyLovey
    The chute was then fitted to the doser bottom plate, which was then screwed back onto the grinder. The spout was then tweaked into its final shape, as seen here, one view from the bottom and one from the top.
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  • LoveyLovey
    Now, good as this little chute was at keeping all the grounds in a nice little pile in the basket, it was hanging a bit too low under the doser. I found that it was scraping the coffee as I moved the pf around under the doser. I couldn't trim the metal back too much as I would lose the small funnel effect that I was looking for, so back to the drawing board. This time I decided that I would make use of the taper of the doser exit chute to hold the spout, which would sit inside the doser and not protrude from the bottom. I made a cardboard template, which was trimmed to the correct size after much inserting and removing from the doser.
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  • LoveyLovey
    I then measured the sides of the cardboard and transferred these measurements to the aluminium sheet. As I didn't have a protractor to measure the angles, I had to measure everything with a ruler to plot points and obtain the angles that way. The template looked very impressive after a while and took me back to my high school tech drawing days  ;). After double checking the measurements, I cut the aluminium sheet into the shape I needed. I decided not to worry about the rear wall on this occasion, as it would have added another weird angle to the chute and would have created more fitting problems. I didn't mention it before, but the metal part of the doser star can not be removed easily, so I had to work around it to get the chute in place. The spout sits nicely in the tapered exit chute and doesn't seem to move around.
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  • LoveyLovey
    After re-assembly of the doser, it was time for a test run. I must admit that I was pretty impressed with the nice mound of coffee in the basket, and zero mess in the dregs tray. It does appear to be slightly biased towards the rear of the basket, but I think that could be easily fixed if I feel the need. I also think it looks pretty neat too, not hanging out too far and spoiling the looks of the doser.
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  • LacehimLacehim
    Nice write up lovey.  I too have small baskets (45mm  :o ) and find that my K6 spills too much.  I wonder if this mod would also work on that too? FYI to combat point 1 I just dismantled the doser and put electrical tape on the lower star.  This has worked rather well and there is very little left over in the doser.  So much so that I no longer have to manually sweep it out everyday. :) Maybe my K6 can be saved after all.
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  • Koffee_KosmoKoffee_Kosmo
    Good work Lovey Its taken you about a year but its been worth it  :o I also tried two or three other methods from other various forum contributors before I settled on the method that worked best And that method is the one you have also had success with Give us an update again after a few days   KK
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  • LoveyLovey
    on 1304663253:
    Nice write up lovey.  I too have small baskets (45mm  :o ) and find that my K6 spills too much.  I wonder if this mod would also work on that too?
    A spout mod should work on any type of doser, the shape of the chute would determine which way you go with it with regards to shape and depth of the spout.
    FYI to combat point 1 I just dismantled the doser and put electrical tape on the lower star.  This has worked rather well and there is very little left over in the doser.  So much so that I no longer have to manually sweep it out everyday. :)
    I did have electrical tape on the doser fins and it worked quite well. I
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  • Koffee_KosmoKoffee_Kosmo
    I did have electrical tape on the doser fins and it worked quite well. I
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  • LoveyLovey
    on 1304751808:
    Double or single sided foam tape is the best and its also easy KK
    I did look at our local green hardware shop after seeing your post on the Mazzer, but they have a limited selection and nothing that I found that was suitable. I've got another material to try out, which hopefully I can attempt tomorrow.
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  • Koffee_KosmoKoffee_Kosmo
    on 1304752293:
    I did look at our local green hardware shop after seeing your post on the Mazzer, but they have a limited selection and nothing that I found that was suitable. I've got another material to try out, which hopefully I can attempt tomorrow.
    Have you got a super cheap or auto parts store close ?? They are sure to have it KK
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  • LoveyLovey
    Thanks for the tips, we've got a Autopro and Repco here, but I'll try this other stuff first, then I'll check them out. Thanks again, Steve.
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  • Dry_bean.Dry_bean.
    on 1304661975:
    After re-assembly of the doser, it was time for a test run. I must admit that I was pretty impressed with the nice mound of coffee in the basket, and zero mess in the dregs tray. It does appear to be slightly biased towards the rear of the basket, but I think that could be easily fixed if I feel the need. I also think it looks pretty neat too, not hanging out too far and spoiling the looks of the doser.
    Crikey, you have been busy Steve, well done. I really should give my Mazzer Mini the treatment, seems whenever I get the urge to tinker I head for the bikes :-[ will get round to the grinder one day. ;)
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  • Koffee_KosmoKoffee_Kosmo
    Although I don't need a chute mod for the BNZ There is the odd time when I am not looking, the grinds will hit the edge of the basket and fall off making a mess Just for the fun of it I am going to make a small inconspicuous chute for the BNZ The shape of the exit hole is very similar to Lovey's grinder as pictured below, a kind of squared off triangle index.php?action=dlattach;topic=1487.0;attach=83;image KK
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