This is the boiler element in my machiene here you can see the extraction rod and temperature measure probe in the grub screw - shows me the temperature at point of extraction 
here is a close up of the probe goign into the shower head element 
The look into the boiler itself ... there is a spiral element that heats the water. You can see the white dots ... i dont know what that is but its some sort of buildup ... so i plan to clean it out .. they scrub off ... 
ok on this picture you can see the location where i put the PID, the display shows set temperature and current temperature. Once within a few degrees it starts to pulse the boiler keeping it +/- 3C, AWESOME!!!! 
I havent taken this picture ... so i credit who ever did ... as you can see here ... the inside on the brass boiler (on the left) and the extraction element rod ... and righ under it is the black grub screw (just above the shower screen) well i have a probe there .. and one in the boiler (still working on that one)
some of my latte art , hahahah ... SOAK IT UP!!! 
Ok here you can see the drilled hole, at that stage i was shitting my pants hoping that everything went fine, i have used 2 drill bits one small one and then a bigger one. As you can see the boiler is nicely clamped, last thing you want is the boiler to move around when you drill!
This is a brass boiler so putting a thread into it was really easy ... on this occasion i am using 1/8 BSP thread and carefully and slowly winding the thread in. Make sure that its straight otherwise it will leak, and that’s the end of your boiler!!!
Oh, make sure you descale your boiler before you drill, you cant really see but the spiral and brass element is much cleaner ... the white shit on the walls i scrubbed with an old toothbrush later on. On this picture you are looking straight through the threaded boiler ... haha once again at that stage i was thinking to myself "what if it doesn’t work" - Be sure to was all the brass shavings out of it
Ok this is the length of the probe that went into the boiler ... its fair long as there is hold water at the bottom of the boiler and the hot water on the top ... so u want the best of two world!!! The response time to the PID is really good, so no worries there. The probe was custom made for my purpose!
Ok ... FINITO!!!! there it is all in place ... on the top of the pic you are looking at the PID ... i might insulate it, but the heat transfer is not all that much so i might not worry about it ... we will see ... 
There is the side look to it ... as you can see on the PID there is the Set temperature (in green) and the actual temp (in red) ... the PID pulses the boiler when its in range, like i said the response time is pretty good .. so when temperature starts to drop it knows to turn on before it hits the minimum value.. there is still some temperature loss through out the extraction but the PID brings it back pretty quick!
This is my home setup .. there you can see the Jolly next to the silvia!!! Jolly-Silvia what a golden combination. I also have a little isomac grinder to play around with different beans and doing crazy experiments. Ohhh golden bag espresso blend by RIO COFFEE .. NO SUBSTITUTE!!!!-------------
Sorry for the crappy quality photos used my phone to snap the photos ... if you want to use these somwhere else please refference back to this page ... better still send me an email and ask for permission.
sqrl@internode.on.net
If you missed the discussion find it here
http://www.coffeegeek.com/forums/espresso/machines/190190
(c) 2005, Kiril
