We've heard from a few people that they still experience the "skip first step" bug.

We'd like to help us all get this problem fixed.

The tricky thing about this "bug" is that there several different things it could be, all which show up as "skip first step".   

The most common cause is the "exit preinfusion if pressure over 3 bar" feature, ie this "exit condition" being accidentally triggered:

If you have a profile with maximum water flow for preinfusion, and:

your main valve opens a bit slowly.

or you have any partial blockage

then you can accidentally trigger the "skip preinfusion" by going over pressure, at the start of preinfusion, simply from pressure created by the blockage or partially open valve.   There's one other case we've seen:

Some German made pressure sensors gave a falsely high pressure reading, when they get too hot and pressure is actually quite low.  We've moved off them, but some machines out there have them.  Only a few hundred DE1 have those in them. Power cycling your machine can temporarily fix the "skip first step" for you, because you give the machine a little bit of time to cool.

Regarding above: "your main valve opens a bit slowly."

this can happen due to calcification or debris

as your machine gets warmer, the electromagnet in the valve gets weaker, and has a harder time pushing through the obstruction

Power cycling your machine can temporarily fix the "skip first step" for you, because you give the machine a little bit of time to cool.

I personally had this exact problem "in the extreme" with a beta v1.0 machine, that I refused to ever decalcify, to see how far I could push it.  Power cycling would let the machine work again for a while.

Several years ago, it was possible for the profile to be incompletely sent to the DE1, but that problem was fixed a while ago, with a "CRC check" that happens automatically, and the profile is auto-resent if corrupted. So.... if you have a "skip first step" happen, please 

immediately take a photo of your espresso shot

and a photo of your profile settings (first step, if it's an advanced profile)

and contact our tech support team.

We'll suggest a solution for your case, and we can see if it works.

#troubleshooting #support #bug