Improving the humble Espresso Gasket
One of the few parts that wears out on an all espresso machines, is the rubber gasket that forms a seal between the group head and your portafilter.
We've been working on how to improve “life with a gasket” from every angle we could think of.
REMOVING: Firstly, there's “how to remove the gasket”. We're trialing various tools, with the intention of including that tool, along with any gasket we send you. So far, this double-ended one in the photo is our favorite. And in our latest gasket design, we've added a notch on the inside ring, to slide that tool into. There's also a light chamfer at the edges, to help you slide that tool in.
MATERIAL: A lot of people in the Home Barista community prefer silicone rubber gaskets, instead of traditional ones. However, when making design choices for the v1.0 DE1, I was concerned that we were already “way too innovative” for a lot of people's comfort zone, and I worried that an unfamiliar “locking feel” to the portafilter would freak some people out. Sort of how people judge a car by how the driver side door closes. So: I decided to use MBR rubber, as that is what I found as the material used in virtually all professional Italian espresso machines. Now, 7 years into making our machines, I feel that our audience can now deal with a bit more unfamiliar-but-better design choices from us. So, our new gaskets will made from silicone.
COLOR: gaskets fail for two reasons 1) coffee grinds mashed into them and 2) the rubber gets brittle. Our gaskets have been black, which is the only choice with MBR Rubber. Other vendors (such as Cafelat) use red or blue. In deciding what color to pick, I wanted something that wasn't garish, but from a functionality standpoint, I wanted a light color, that would clearly show coffee grounds stuck to it. That would make it much easier to help our customers, and see if their gasket leaking problem could simply resolved by removing the gasket and cleaning the coffee grounds off. And so, our new gaskets will be a light grey color.
INSTALLATION: on the top of the gasket, “UP” is printed. This is surprisingly a common problem with installing gaskets, as they do have a preferred direction to be installed in, yet it's not obvious what that is.
For those without a DE1, these are 8.5mm, 58mm gaskets, and should work on other machines that use those standards as well. However, we're not in the gasket business, so ours will continue to be more expensive than Cafelat's excellent gaskets. Plus we don't use resellers like Cafelat does, so shipping will likely be more expensive. Cafelat's gaskets are likely available in your country from a reseller. Thus… I don't really recommend this gasket for non-DE1 owners.
Because we're a small company (50 people) and still have a fairly new product (7 years old) we tend to order parts in short runs, and each time we re-order, we look to see if there are ways to further improve it.
If you have thoughts on how to improve the humble gasket, please share them!
Updated 2022/03/17