The first bit of bad news is we ran out of groups around 18 Dec due tounforeseen demand (51 sold) and we will not have any more groups until the 18thof this month
The guy who has been waiting the longest ordered on 12Nov, so he and others are getting a bit cheesed off, as i would be too if theroles were reversed
I was not prepared to order a greater number ofgroups than we did until we had some idea of the demand. It is very easy tosay now that we should have ordered more, but there are very few sure bets inlife and this one could easily have gone the other way
A Fracino representative has gone to Italy this week and i am trying totwist his arm to bring even a couple of groups back with him so we can make upthe machines for the customers that have been waiting since 12 Nov, but letssee
When the groups arrive around 18th of this month we will be in a positionto ship all the over due machines before the end of this month
The second bit of bad news is;
The machines shipped to date have a suspended boiler design, that is to saythe boiler is held in place by the copper pipes alone – the boiler is notmounted to the frame
While the packaging has worked well in protecting the exterior of themachine from the rough handling, the boiler has proved to be vulnerable tomoving if the machine is dropped from a height exceeding 1 metre
In the minor cases you get small steam leaks from the compression fittings(easily fixed – tighten the nut a 1/4 turn)
However we had one case where the machine was dropped from a sufficientheight (forklift?) for the boiler to move sideways, resulting in a side panelbeing heavily dented from the inside by the boiler slamming against it andsmashing the thermal trip switch off. There was no visible damage on theoutside of the box at all
As a result we are changing the design slightly so the boiler is secured toa cradle that is mounted to the chassis of the machine
Hopefully this assuages those who think that this project has far too muchsweetness & light to be credibleâ ¨
There are no performance issues with themachine that we are aware of and no changes are planned, other than the onedetailed above (unless you consider a change from a 4 x 1.5mm tip to a 4 x1.0mm tip worth a mention)