# Sage Oracle - no power to grinder



## Kestas (Jun 12, 2019)

Hi all. Wonder if anyone could help or at least guide the right direction. For number of years had Sage barista and became a fan of it, but also always dreamt of Oracle. Opportunity came to buy a dirty cheap Oracle and couldn't resist. It appears that Grinder is not working. Done some basics investigation:
Stripped it appart, 
Tested the basket switches (both working fine and signal fron the switch goes to the main board),
Also a second switch activates tamper. 
After all the tests, the power is still not comming to the grinder motor. Could it be a faulty main board since it had a minor steam leak inside (due to O ring leak) or could it be anything else? Also maybe there's someone local to Reading who knows more and could run a quick test or maybe even repair? There's a main board on ebay for 50, but one to make sure I have tested all before starting to replace the board.


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## ajohn (Sep 23, 2017)

All I can think of is using a meter to check that power is getting to the grinder motor. If it is and it's not running looks like you have a burnt out motor. That can happen if the upper outer burr has been adjusted finer when there was no need, Not heard of it happening while grinding beans.

All of the Sage grinders are essentially the same. The adjustment method varies. I bought a SGP that some one had adjusted. I set a rather fine setting without any beans. Motor slowed and then slowed even more. Pulled the plug quickly otherwise it would have stalled - that would burn out the motor. Fortunately no damage. Put the burr back to it's standard setting and on min grind the motor just slowed a bit and remained like that, One step coarser and speed increase to normal without grinding beans. Did the same on my BE that hadn't been adjusted and exactly the same happened. Seems this is how their grinders should come, There should be no need to use the min setting.


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## Kestas (Jun 12, 2019)

Power coming through the switches and goes to the main board, but nothing coming out of board. Also grinder motor is running fine if powered directly to 240 supply. So my question is: is the main board the only thing that failed, or the other 2 boards could also affect it? Would like to narrow it down before start replacing the board.


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## ajohn (Sep 23, 2017)

Trace the wires back to the main board and see if there is power there. If there is where does it disappear?

The DB uses a board with triacs on it that is fastened to the lid. I think that these drive the heaters and the pump but not so sure about the pump. They probably use triacs to drive any 240v part but on the grinder maybe smaller than these. The small chips on the board may fail as well.









Your other boards may have active rather than passive parts on then. Resistors and capacitors as above are passive parts. If any active parts the brain will signal them to turn on. If not the active part will be in the brain, They could even use a relay to drive it. Active parts don't need high voltages to drive them so the brain will send suitable signals to turn them on and off. On might be a high or a low.

There is no grinder on a DB. The BE I had may have used a similar arrangement to the Oracle but I never delved that far into it.


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## Kestas (Jun 12, 2019)

My skills run out When it comes to testing capacitors and resistors. But tempting to fix that machine as I find it self challenging. Shall I change the whole high voltage board rather than main board? Also there was a steem leak inside so would make sence that the board at the top is affected in some way regardless of me not seeing any visual burns or damages, but changing the whole board is not that rocket science


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## Rincewind (Aug 25, 2020)

The components (the visible ones; i don't know if the other side has SMD stuff on it or not) on that Triac Board cost peanuts to replace...i can't see the number on the actual triacs themselves but i'll stick my neck out and say that they are readily available and won't cost the earth (i stand to be corrected)....but...those 6 pin IC's are little devices called Opto Isolators or opto-coupler...in a nutshell it's a fancy led and an led detector inside a chip...the clue to what they do is the "gap" (hole) in the PCB where they are mounted...anyhow they are £1.11 at :-

MOC3063

the other parts resistors and those capacitors (yellow) will be even cheaper to replace...as i don't know what the triac number is i'll stick my neck out (again) and say they will be cheap as chips (pun intended)...so the total BOM's for that board would be around £10-£20 at the most...the complete board (assuming you can get it in the UK) will probably be dearer....i have a sneaky feeling you will only be able to purchase the board from Australia and that's gonna ramp up the price (shipping)...ergo if you suspect it's that board it'd probably be "cheaper" to swap all those parts if you are competent with a soldering iron, sucker / wick.


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## ajohn (Sep 23, 2017)

I wasn't suggesting checking resistors and capacitors just saying that any board that switches things on and off will have an active part on it especially if mains voltage is being switched. The brain will switch the parts on and off with much lower voltage signals. With this fault the high voltage switching part may be in the brain or they may have put it on a separate board or even gone from 3 to 4 triacs on the DB board I posted a photo of as an illustration.

All people can do with this sort of fault is completely trace the wiring back to what ever switches it on and off and on an item like the DB triac board the signals going to the opto isolators. Those may fail as well or if that is driven from the brain what ever part does that,

R's and C's. Unlikely to cause this sort of problem but if after fitting a new active part it fails sooner than expected maybe change them. There can be other factors as well. A common one is heaters causing the electrics to trip due to the element not being insulated from the boiler it's in. The same can happen with a motor. The terminals should be insulated from it's frame etc. Check continuity with a multimeter after disconnecting what ever it is, An insulation tester should be used really but an ordinary dvm should show significant faults. An insulation tester would check with maybe 500v or more. Not heard of any Sage machine having this type of problem.

The parts on the DB triac board can be bought. Some would buy from RS Components to be sure they are completely authentic but that means buying more than needed as they sell in packs. Prices on these parts though are not excessive even in packs. There is a UK seller of spares now but it looks like more are available from Australia and maybe NZ. The UK one seems to concentrate on Sage bean to cup - the ones that include a grinder, Some parts will be common across the range. A link was posted some where but appears to have gone,


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## Rincewind (Aug 25, 2020)

ajohn said:


> ...A link was posted some where but appears to have gone,


If i can find it pal i'll post it on here.

I did see the link somewhere but for the life of me i can't find it now...i think they sold the boards as well (iirc) for those that are not happy with using a soldering iron or DVM/other...a board swap out saves chucking the machine into a landfill and probably cheaper than buying a new machine.


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## ajohn (Sep 23, 2017)

Sage bean to cup spares should bring it up for the UK. For Oz sources set the country code in google and search breville spares.


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## Kestas (Jun 12, 2019)

Both boards are currently on ebay. Which one shall I change first? My gut feeling is the top one high voltage


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