OK, so not too long ago our rather nice home espresso maker started flaking out. The boiler had started leaking, and that meant that any time we were using steam, steam was being released inside the unit. Eventually, the leak in the boiler got bad enough and the steam prevelant enough, that it quit grinding the coffee automatically like it should. So, we ordered a new boiler and put that in. Then, we tried to isolate the fault that caused the grinder to not work and couldn’t find it. So, I pulled all the printed circuit boards out of the unit and cleaned them all with alcohol and a stiff, plastic bristled brush to get any corrosion off of the exposed traces in case there was a short somewhere. I put it all back together, plugged it in, and nothing changed. The grinder still didn’t work. While I was working on the unit I had pulled it out of the coffee nook into the main kitchen so I would have more room. Before we left for Chicago, we wanted to put it back so it would be out of the way. So, I put it back in the coffee nook. Today is the first time I’ve tried to use it since we left, and VOILA! The grinder worked rather unexpectedly! Good thing I was just doing the very first espresso shot, which I do without grounds in order to prewarm the brew unit. If I had already dumped in grounds and then it ground up some more beans and dumped that in as well it would have overloaded the brew chamber. Instead, I got a regular brew cycle. Anyway, I’m glad it’s working again. It probably just needed a complete power down and reset cycle in order to let the cleaned up circuit boards undo the effects of shorting out some sort of detection circuit (there is a microswitch on the grounds chamber that signals when enough coffee has been ground by closing a 30V DC circuit, I’m pretty sure that the power side was shorted to the detection side, I’m just not sure why it didn’t reset and start working immediately after I cleaned the PCBs instead of needing another power cycle). Mysterious electronics rock!! At least that saves me from buying a new $175 control board…