After almost 7 years of faithful service, my Keurig B70 coffee machine decided to call it quits. I ordered a replacement unit, and put the old one on a shelf for later investigation. I initially thought that maybe I could repair it and keep it is a backup, but those notions quickly disappeared after the equipment breakdown started.
There are not a lot of visible screws on the unit; There are a few on the bottom, so that is where I started disassembly. With no idea how things were put together, I stuck to the "find a screw, remove a screw" process.
About 20 minutes into the process, I gave up on the idea of servicing the B70. I now understand why Keurig does not have service centers and/or recommended repair shops - these things are clearly not meant to be disassembled. With that change in mindset, things got a bit easier, as breaking parts was no longer a concern, and keeping track of which screws went with which parts also did not matter. As with most products, there are a bazillion screws, and very few have the exact same size and/or threading. Here is the pile of screws from when all was said and done:
My primary focus was now to find the brains, as well as the pumps, for the B70 - just curiosity more than anything. While breaking things apart, I was expecting to see a lot of calcium or other deposits in the water lines, clogging things up and leading to unit failure. However, I in fact found almost none. It would appear the pump just quit due to age/use.
After a little more struggle, I found and pulled the circuit board as well as the screen. I was a bit surprised that the screen was just a dot matrix array, I would have thought for their manufacturing runs that they would have had a custom part made. Another surprise was the quality of soldering on the boards - the one board looked hand soldered (joints were too sloppy for a machine). I know I jumped on the K-Cup wagon before most and had an early unit, but I was really surprised over this...
All things considered, it was a fairly interesting breakdown. I'll save the boards and research them further in the future as time allows.
