Making a Portafilter Wall Mount

I always seem to have Portafilters lying around on the kitchen worktop, partly because I have a couple of them (the original Gaggia filter, and a naked PF), and partly because I tend to leave them off the machine after cleaning. Some kind of wall mount seemed like the solution, but I did a quick search and didn’t find anything suitable, so decided to have a go at making one.

Wood seemed like a natural choice, to avoid damaging the Portafilter, and being easy to work with. I started with some 45x45mm scrap soft wood, and routed out two 70mm diameter holes (I made a temporary MDF jig for the router to cut this radius). Then I routed slots for the Portafilter handles (about 19mm for the standard PF, and 16mm for the naked PF) as shown below:

Portafilter Wall Mount

The next stage was to chisel out some slots to accommodate the “ears” on the Portafilters. This was pretty easy for the naked PF, but it took a bit more work to shape it to suit the original Gaggia PF, mainly due to the big flared handle on the PF. I put a 45 degree chamfer on the lower front edge of the block, to make it easy to insert/remove the Gaggia PF.

Having finished the wood work, I sanded it smooth and treated it. After searching for a suitable “food safe” coating, I settled on pure Tung Oil. I didn’t thin the first coat (to avoid mixing in any toxic thinners/solvents!) and it worked out fine. I applied three coats at 24 hour intervals, sanding lightly between coats. Each coat was applied with a brush, left for 20~30 minutes, then the surface was wiped clean with a rag.

Portafilter Wall Mount

Here’s a view after the final coat. It seems to give a nice smooth finish, and is apparently resistant to water, alcohol etc. Time will tell how well it lasts in daily use!

Portafilter Wall Mount

Here’s a top view showing the recesses needed to accept the “ears” on the Portafilters. The left side is for the original Gaggia PF, which needs a very large area removed to allow it to be lifted in/out easily. The right side is for the naked PF and needs a much smaller recess:

Portafilter Wall Mount

Here’s a view of the two Portafilters slotted into the wall mount bracket. Now I just need to drill a couple of holes and mount it! I’m planning to leave this for a week or so to cure properly before using it in earnest.

Portafilter Wall Mount

Here’s a final update, showing it mounted on the wall with a couple of 8×2½” screws:

Portafilter Wall Mount

The IGBT Driver Board is ready!

The completed PCB arrived from Ragworm on Saturday, and I’m quite pleased with the end result. The board arrived vacuum packed into bubble-wrap, with a couple of free LEDs thrown in (and some orange paper hearts!) Here’s a view of the top surface:

PCB Top Surface

I think this  looks pretty good for a first version. The silk-screen looks very slightly offset (see JP2, JP3) but nothing to worry about. Here’s the underside of the board:

PCB Bottom Surface

Today I made a start on assembling the board. I was relieved to find that all the components fitted fine, with no obvious layout errors. Unfortunately, I was missing one component (5mm pitch screw terminals for the mains input), so it’s time to place another order! Here’s the partially assembled board:

PCB Assembly

Google Code Shutdown

Google are shutting down Google Code. Nooooooooooooo…. why oh why oh why.
Now I have to migrate everything to Github. And learn Git. Great. Perhaps I could use Sourceforge, with its charming advertising banners. Marvellous.

But wait… they have an export tool! How thoughtful. Let’s try that.

The Google Code Exporter is experiencing extremely high traffic. The export queue is full. Please come back later.

Oh well. Perhaps I’ll try again later…