Since my appetite for coffee is at such an irregular basis I thought it would be a good idea to buy one of the Nespresso machines. The Krups XN2120 is a nice small model and since I thought I would be spending a lot of doe on the Nespresso-cups the price was a pro either.

Alas..Instead of pouring me a creamy tasty cup, all I got was a puddle of water on the table. It was pouring from underneath the machine which looked quite dangerous. I just didn’t get around to sending it to “Nespresso Club” and wait for about a month to have it repaired – so I opened it….

The coupling from the tubing to the pump are made of some hard but brittle plastic kind (reminds me of bakelite) and one of them broke. Luckily the broken parts were still inside the machine so I decided to glue it together.

Because I don’t trust glued plastic that much I also made a sort of brace to hold the pieces together. After some thought I found some 2mm electric copper wire which is great to solder together and is definaely strong enough.

First thing is to get the screws open underneath… Why do manufacturers always make things difficult for your repairing needs. Nintendo h=introduced the tri-wing, the TORX was something which you don’t have in the cabinet when the XBOX came out and the Krups has some oval kind of screw which just can’t be opened by any mainstream screwdriver.

I had a 13mm screw in my toolbox which I drilled on the bottom end. I wiggled the drill sideways to get an oval shape. Some fitment tests and yes: it works perfectly. (sorry for the bad picture but I hope the idea is clear); Open sesame.

After this it’s easy to locate the problem on coffeemachines. Apart from the design, they’re all just basically tubing and heater elements.

Below some shots of the copper brace again… sorry for the blurryness. The slots on the end of the knees hold a clip which secures the knee to the tubing. One slot broke so the knee went off the tube.I put a copper ring around the broken pieces and attached that part with another copper ring to the main knee. So actually the end of the knee is now there as a sort of shim for the copper brace so the fitment is like original.

You can see at the picture below – it’s still broken but the parts can’t go anywhere with the copper brace around it. Inbetween the copper you can see the clip which holds the knee to the tube.

And after that it’s putting it together and have a cup with George, what else?