Hi, Andy -

Thanks for the warm welcome and behind-the-scenes work in getting our CS sponsorship set up.

This past April, MLG began offering PID kits for Rancilio Silvia machines in the US.  We quickly learned that Silvia owners reside on every continent and that international sales would be an important part of our business (many thanks are owed, in particular, to Steve C for his patient assistance and prodding to get us to "go international" with our sales).

A typical MLG kit for adding PID temperature control for Silvia weighs just over a kilogram, and ships in a box measuring around 300 mm x 300 mm x 200 mm.  This makes the kits very easily shipped worldwide.

Some of our friendliest past customers reside in Australia.  And we regularly receive inquiries from folks in Oz regarding our kits.  So sponsorship of CS was a very natural step.  

Installation of our kits still requires skills with things electrical and electronic, but we have attempted to greatly simplify sourcing the parts and setting up the PID controller.  

We buy large quantities of correctly sized and spec'd wire in multiple colors, commercial quality crimp connectors, special limits thermocouple wire, and a variety of high quality controllers.  We also carefully calibrate and check each and every controller, program and tune it for Silvia, and test its performance on a real machine.

Finally, we hand craft custom stainless steel enclosures that are a perfect match for Silvia.  We shopped for many months for off-the-shelf enclosures for our kits  before deciding that nothing satisfactory existed.  So our shop now includes a nice little fabrication operation for cutting, bending, spot welding, and finishing our enclosures.

All CS readers are welcome to contact us through our website at any time with questions about our kits, or about PID installations in general.  We are happy to help folks who decide to go the DIY route for PID installation, regardless of whether they decide to get a kit from MLG or source the parts themselves.

Jim

For the month of January 2009, we will be offering the following special prices on PID kits for Rancilio Silvia machines:

  Watlow SD3C basic kit (brew temp control only):  $340AUD + shipping

  Watlow SD3C dual kit (brew temp + steam temp control):  $390AUD + shipping

Shipping cost for either kit via USPS Express Mail will be an additional $50AUD.

These prices are available only to CS members for kits shipped to Australia.  We recognize the problems that the current AUD to USD exchange rates are causing for our CS customers.  So we will accept PayPal payments directly in AUD this month to remove the exchange rate from the transaction.

You can use this link  www.pidkits.com/messaging.php to contact us to place an order at these prices.  These special prices will not automagically be applied to orders placed directly from our web site using the BuyItNow buttons.

(As always, we build kits to order, and it usually requires around 3 weeks from order placement until we have a kit boxed and ready to ship).

Jim
www.PIDKits.com