# Cut down hopper for single dosing an Iberital MC2



## EarwaxUK (Jan 19, 2014)

Hi all

I thought I'd post a quick how-to guide on cutting down the hopper for an Iberital MC2. It's not exactly rocket science but I've not seen anyone else do it so I thought I'd have a go and post the outcome here.

First of all, the reason I did this was because I single dose. Aside from the fact you can't close off the bottom of the hopper and remove it while it's got beans in, I find I get better consistency from the MC2 if I single dose. Obviously a hopper full of beans exerts more pressure on the beans at the bottom than a nearly empty hopper and, in my hands, this makes quite a difference to the grind. Single dosing means I waste fewer beans but also that my grind consistency is significantly improved. I suspect that this effect is worse on conical burr grinders as opposed to flat burr machines as, with conical burrs, you are forcing beans more directly against the cutting surface. I have done no back to back testing to support this - it's just a suspicion.

The main issue with single dosing like this is popcorning (beans being thrown out of the mouth of the burrs and bouncing around all over the place). Using a smaller hopper is a common "fix" in this situation but, due to the narrow base of the MC2 hopper, most of the common modifications (like camera lens hoods) don't work quite so well. I was looking around to see what others have done and nobody seems to have mentioned cutting down the original hopper. Parxuk has a thread on this forum (link here) using the funnel from the Aeropress (which is probably the best use I've ever seen for one) but it's not really neat enough for me so I decided to just cut down the standard hopper.

I was intending to do a stage by stage walkthrough but there really isn't enough to make it worth while. So rather than a series of photographs of my kitchen covered in plastic dust I'll simply tell you what I did.

Firstly, I used a coping saw with a 28 tooth per inch blade. This was OK but, if I were to do this again, I would try to find a finer saw, something more like 32 or even 36 tpi would be better. The 28tpi blade I used tore at the plastic quite a lot. You can see from the picture below that it pretty much shredded the hopper.






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I also wrapped the hopper in masking tape before I started. My main concern was shattering the hopper and ending up with nothing but sharp bits of plastic. This turned out not to be a problem at all, in fact the masking tape actually just got in the way and peeled off. I gave up with it in the end and just cut by eye.

As you can see, I sanded down what is now the top of the hopper. Thanks to the horrible mess the 28tpi saw blade made, I started out with 100 grit sand paper to get most of the swarf and sharp edges off before stepping up to 400 and finally 800 grit wet and dry paper. You can't really see in the photo here, but the rim of the shorter hopper is completely smooth to the touch.

The whole thing is a little rough and ready, and there are a few knicks in the plastic where the saw jumped. I don't have any way to hold the hopper still, other than my hands, so I did this whole job over the kitchen sink with the hopper in one hand and the saw in the other. If I had a work bench or a clamp which I could have used to immobilise the hopper properly, this wouldn't have been a problem and you wouldn't know that it wasn't a botch job done in the kitchen!

One other observation is that the hopper is slightly tapered all the way down which means the lid is now slightly loose. There's probably around 1.5-2mm play when the lid sits on the hopper. This isn't an issue for me as I don't store beans in the hopper (obviously, I single dose). The finished product looks like this:






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Finally, does it work? Well, it seems to have made difference to the popcorning problem. Before doing this, I used to have to stop the machine, let the few remaining beans settle and start it again. It could take several rounds of this before actually grinding all the beans that were in there. I've ground several doses today since doing this and I've not had a single bean left each time, it's just run itself empty. Overall, I'm pretty happy with that!


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## GS11 (Feb 20, 2013)

Nice write up. Finished result looks good. For the money the MC2 produces excellent grind quality and continues to remain a popular entry level grinder.


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## EarwaxUK (Jan 19, 2014)

Thanks.

I found the MC2 to be very frustrating at first. I really struggled to get it dialled in with my Gaggia Classic. Fortunately some patience and some good advice from this forum and I got it sorted out but it took some time. I'm quite happy with it now, but I know a lot more about what I'm doing, I've got the experience to know how far to adjust it and I've got my shot pulling process down such that I can do it without thinking too much about it. In that sort of scenario, it's a competent grinder (if a little slow and noisy).


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## vikingboy (Mar 11, 2013)

Just don't use a bottomless pf with a mc2 and you'll be fine.


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## EarwaxUK (Jan 19, 2014)

vikingboy said:


> Just don't use a bottomless pf with a mc2 and you'll be fine.


Why not? I've been using a bottomless PF for at least 4 months with my Gaggia Classic and MC2 and it works perfectly well...


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## vikingboy (Mar 11, 2013)

I found it impossible to avoid bad spritzing with mine when I had it. No matter what techniques I tried to resolve it it spritzed.

If yours (and others?) are fine then I suspect mine was badly aligned or something.

Would have been using it with Hasbean and locally roasted beans at the time.


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## EarwaxUK (Jan 19, 2014)

I've never had that problem. I always use an unbent paperclip to stir the grounds in the PF (WDT) but I'd do that regardless.

I had a sprayer once but that's it. I've never really had any problems at all with the bottomless PF - I find it easier than with the nasty Gaggia standard one actually.


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