
Hey there! I am glad you made your way here to COFFEE GRUMP. Full disclaimer – I am a tech guy, not a sales guy. I love coffee and I service the equipment that grinds and brews it for you. If you are looking for a ‘right fix’ not a ‘quick fix’ this is the spot for you. So, grab your cuppa’ Joe and read on…Cheers!
There could be a few things preventing your Rancilio Rocky grinder from not working. It can be from a jam in the grind area or there could be a part that needs to be replaced. First off, we need to determine whether it is a part needing to be replaced mechanically or something that you can unjam to fix. so, with that being said let’s figure out what the problem is.
You’ll first want to find out if there’s any electricity getting into the grinder so we can determine if there is a jam in your grinder. With your grinder plugged in press the grind/start switch and listen to your grinder for humming, or if it starts and stops or lastly, goes through the motions but doesn’t grind.
Any of these scenarios tells you that there is most likely a jam in the grinder. If your grinder has no electricity and is not humming, then you will be looking at replacing possible parts addressed further down in this article.
Always unplug your grinder before you start any service on your grinder and empty the bean hopper. You can dump the beans out or use a vacuum.
If your grinder is humming, it’s a good indication that your grinder has a jam and what you’ll first need to do is turn your hopper to the extreme course setting.
By doing this, you’ll open the gap between the burrs and any debris in there so it can be dislodged and free the grinder motor to operate. Before turning on the grinder to test it, take the unit and shake it upside down to let the debris fall out.
Once free of debris, give it some power. A quick turn on and off to see if this has unjammed the unit. In some cases, this will cure the jam, in the case that it didn’t we’ll have to go a little deeper and take the unit apart.
Unplug your grinder before you start. Turn your (hopper) grind coarseness to the course setting all the way (counterclockwise). A Flathead screwdriver will fit in the finger guard screw holes inside the hopper. Undo and pull out the three screws and the finger guard. The finger guard and the screws out will release your hopper and you can pull it out.
With your hopper out, you exposed the top burr holder. The next step is to take the top burr holder out to clean and inspect it. Using your fingers, grab the bronze holder and turn it counterclockwise. The holder has quite a few threads to it, so you’ll need to turn that quite a few times before this part is fully out.
Once the top burr is out it will expose the grind area and the bottom burr, and you can inspect inside your grinder at the bottom. You can see if there’s any sort of jam now and clear the debris.
In the past, I’ve found glass, wood, nails, metal, plastic all sorts of goodies that have been inside the beans and have jammed in the grinder, it’s not that unusual to find something that isn’t a bean. Usually, the machines catch most of the debris but sometimes it gets by and ends up in your roasted beans.
Clean out this area well (including the screw threads) of any grinds. Then reassemble with the top burr and give it a quick test with electricity. Plug it in and turn it on for a quick test to see if the motor turns freely. If it runs like it wants to grind then we know that we’ve cleared that issue.
At this point, you have cleared the obstruction and can put the unit back together. Go to “Calibrating the Rancilio Rocky Grinder” for the proper reassembly of the burr and hopper.
There are two versions of the hopper, one that’s a complete molded unit and the newer version that is in two parts. You’ll notice this right away with the hopper out; the complete unit is all tinted blue including the stop post.
The second version with the two parts is where you can make better adjustments for calibrating. It has a black stop post with two screws you can just adjust it and slide it either way which can do some fine adjusting.
The new hopper can be found and bought off of the ECS Coffee website.
The newer hopper can be fitted to an older grinder if you wanted to purchase the part. Go to “Calibrating the Rancilio Rocky Grinder” lower in this post for the proper reassembly of the burr and hopper.
If you have no power going to the grinder (and it’s apparent that it’s a power issue) I’ve only experienced two issues that could be causing this in my service history:
Let’s jump into how to do the repairs for the problems above:
To do these repairs you’re going to take more of the grinder apart. Rancilio makes a great product that is intended to last for a long time and so you will be able to take it apart with ease and put it back together again relatively easily.
Once you have your black casing free from your silver casing your grinder motor will float other than the wiring (don’t touch the wiring if you don’t need to).
You can undo the ground wire connected to your front black casing. One screw and now you have your front black casing free.
The black casing is made of cast metal so it can easily break if a grinder is dropped even from a short height.
After taking the grinder apart (in the above section) you can replace your broken casing and can move your hardware from your broken black casing to your new black casing.
You can find nozzle or “dispensing break” replacement specifically for this model on Amazon.
To do so replace the outer black shell, follow these steps:
Before replacing the burrs consider what Rancilio says, “The burr lifetime is 10 years“, but if your burrs are damaged or 10 years old you can replace them.
You can find replacement burrs on Amazon to make your grinder work as good as new.
How to replace your burr on your Rocky Rancilio:
If you find you can’t get a fine grind from your calibration, you can adjust the black post underside of your hopper by loosening off the two screws and retighten. You won’t need to move this far, around 1-2mm. Keep in mind you don’t want your burrs touching on reassembly.
Make sure that you’re not testing at zero, but you want to take it back 6-7 notches and then you can set your grind from there to the machine that you are using the grinder to brew.
If you want to change your beans just turn your grinder over to empty it. There isn’t a lot to clean your grinder other than a general wipe down daily.
Urnex Grindz are a great product found cheap on Amazon to remove residue and oils without disassembling the burrs in the Rocky grinder if you want to.
I’m the Coffee Grump. I’m a tech guy, not a sales guy. I love coffee, and I service the equipment that grinds and brews it for you. I have more than 25 years of experience in technical and customer service in coffee machinery, and I hope to share some of that experience with you with this website!
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The Coffee Grump has more than 25 years of experience in technical and customer service in coffee machinery!
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