A totally normal screenshot from the famous James Hoffman review of the Cremina.
Mirriam-webster's dictionary defines foreshadowing as an ...
Detritus, acorns, and scale abound in the boiler and on the heating element. So much for a quick project!
The boiler post wire brushing. It's quite gorgeous on the inside.
Please ignore how dirty the front panel is, I hadn't cleaned it yet. One of the changes I would have made if I was reordering the indicator light and switch would be to match the bezzels, but that's only a small aesthetic mismatch that totally doesn't stare me in the face every morning when making espresso.
First turn on setup: the Cremina plugged into a surge protector plugged into a GFCI outlet. The multimeter was a back up to the GFCI with the red probe being placed on the boiler exterior prior to starting to see if the boiler would turn live.
The state of the heater element after my initial cleaning. Note the lack of insulative varnish preventing water intrusion.
A close up of the removed moist ceramic insulation. In retrospect, I didn't need to go quite as deep as I did, especially as it got harder to get a pick in and hammer out material the deeper I went.
The new Ceramabond insulation. According to the tin, it should have good moisture resistance. So far, the element has been insulated just fine even with the occasional spill and mess (I'm an engineer, not a barista after all).
Top: Voila! The terrible witness mark. This was sanded out carefully to keep the nipple as concentric as possible.
Bottom: although hard to tell from the photo, the bore in the valve body that received the steam wand was well below center, causing the steam wand to misalign and not seal when installed.
Boy, this photo sure makes the bore look even less concentric than before. It's not, thankfully.
I gently clamped the valve body in a milling vice with soft jaws and carefully bored a larger, centered(ish) hole using an endmill (a drill would try to follow the existing hole, making a non-circular mess that would absolutely never seal.
I leak checked using the tried and true water and dish soap method with shop air providing the simulated steam pressure. I had to tighten the securing nut a scary amount, but it sealed and hasn't leaked since.
Your eyes aren't deceiving you, that's a steamy-hot IMS shower screen on a 67 Cremina group!
All done and working! A view I look forward to almost every morning.