After about a month of work I finally have my espresso setup done.
The Machine
Faema Emblema, 2-group commercial espresso machine (E92 platform). Found it on Facebook Marketplace for $500. Previously in service at a coffee shop — still had a Paramount Coffee sticker on the drip tray.
What Was Wrong
The machine wouldn't heat. When I opened it up, the boiler was destroyed by scale — years of hard water with no filtration. The copper was green with oxidation, and the interior was packed with thick calcium deposits breaking off the walls.
The root cause of the no-heat condition was a failed pressure sensor. It's a small PCB in a plastic housing that reads boiler pressure and tells the control board when to fire the heating elements. With a bad reading, the board wouldn't turn on the heaters. The sensor had visible heat damage.
Even after replacing the sensor, the machine still wouldn't heat. Turns out the heating had been disabled in the board's settings — and re-enabling it isn't obvious. I had to call around to espresso machine techs to figure it out: you press Right, then OK on the control panel to turn heating on. Not in the manual.
What I Fixed
- Replaced the pressure sensor and re-enabled heating in the board settings — this got the boiler heating again
- Descaled the boiler and plumbing — cleared out the calcium buildup from the boiler interior, heat exchangers, and pipe fittings
- Diagnosed and traced the electronics — worked through the control board with a multimeter and the Faema service manual to rule out board/MCU failure
- Got both group heads running — the left and right groups had different flow rates at the same volumetric setting; adjusted the pulse counts to balance them
- Plumbed it in at home — the machine uses European BSP thread fittings, so I needed BSP-to-NPT adapters to connect to US plumbing. Added a Little Giant condensate pump for drainage since there's no floor drain nearby
The Countertop
Reclaimed bowling alley lane. Solid maple, about 2.5" thick. Free. Sanded it down, cut to size, drilled a drain hole, and epoxied it.
The Base
Kitchen base cabinets, $100.
The Grinder
GMCW HC-600 Venezia II, $150 on Facebook Marketplace. This is a commercial doser grinder — it grinds into a chamber and you pull a lever to dose. Not ideal for home use where you're single-dosing. I 3D printed a doserless adapter so it grinds directly into the portafilter. I tried a Fellow Opus first — it clogged at espresso-fine settings. The HC-600 works well as long as you keep the burrs clean.
Dialed-In Settings
- Dose: 20g in
- Yield: 40g out (1:2 ratio)
- Time: 25 seconds
- Pump pressure: 9 bar
- Boiler pressure: 1.3 bar
Cost
| Item | Cost |
|---|---|
| Faema Emblema 2-group | $500 |
| GMCW HC-600 Venezia II grinder | $150 |
| Base cabinets | $100 |
| Bowling alley countertop | Free |
| Misc parts & accessories | ~$500 |
| Total | ~$1,250 |
Accessories
- Normcore 58.5mm 7-in-1 Barista Kit (tamper, distributor, WDT) — $127
- Barista Hustle Autocomb WDT tool — $89
- Knock box, drawer style — $63
- Little Giant VCMA-15UL condensate pump + BSP-to-NPT adapters — $83
by Acceptable-Skirt-320
9 Comments
I’m playing with this idea all the time, because I see commercial machines dumped dirt cheap. What’s your general experience like, specifically in comparison to a regular home machine?
What power does it need ?
Awesome project, I want one of these one day!
What’s the heat up time like? Also does this just plug into a dryer type outlet?
honestly what makes this setup great for commercial use kinda sucks for a home setup.
commercial grinders need to look for heat dissipation, so you won’t get a nice flat burr grinder, machines need to be able to pull 10 shots in a row, so the boiler needs forever to heat up.
I got myself into a similar project.
Got an old la pavoni pub2m (non volumetric 2group with HX) for 25€. Seller said was stored indoor only (ominous foreshadowing).
One HX is busted, the boiler is half full of scale and the water in there was hella grimey.
I plan to eventually get it going, with both groups routed to one HX.
I then will implement a lot of “unneccessary” electronics.
BBW, automatic cooling flush (with thermocouple in the brewgroup), PID, and maybe even connectivity with my semi diy gbw grinder to implement something like the sync system (mahlkönig).
Well, right now it sits on my balcony and needs a lot of descaling to get any further.
Omg plz clean your steam wand ewwww
Impressive! I bet that first shot was extra special~
People ask me about older commercial machines and why I won’t touch them… it’s mostly cause no one wants them. Everything’s fixable but putting $500 and 20+ hours of labor into a machine that you’d have to beg someone to take off your hands for maybe a $150 profit?
Sadly not worth it and you have to have a dedicated 220 line. Kills me to think of how many perfectly good machines are just collecting dust or ending up in a scrap yard when it just needs a new pressure stat but no one could be bothered to look at an alternative or won’t fix it cause the machine wouldn’t sell for more than the repair cause it’s not “cool”.
This setup makes me look at my Profitec 500 fondly haha