DeLonghi coffee grounds container problem

This coffee machine by DeLonghi grinds beans to make coffee, and drops the coffee grounds in a container afterwards. It has a warning light for the coffee grounds container that will blink when the container is full and it will light continuously when you slide out the dripping tray and coffee grounds container.

Our machine gradually developed a problem detecting the presence of the coffe grounds container. One day, the warning light wouldn't go out any more. The machine wouldn’t make coffee or even switch off.

There isn't much documentation on this machine. I took the dripping tray and coffee grounds container and looked at them from all angles. I peered into the bay where the dripping tray and grounds container go and found the microswitch that detects the presence of the grounds container.

The container has a protrusion that pushes against the microswitch. This protrusion looked a bit skewed and inspecting it closely I saw that it was all but broken off. It had a crack, looking like material fatigue. So the cause of the problem was that the protrusion had been bent too often, it came askew and couldn’t press the microswitch anymore.

So I had to glue it. I put a few drops of acetone in the crack and let it set for a minute, then put the container upside down and added another drop of acetone. After one more minute I pushed the protrusion back in place and clamped it gently. After half an hour the acetone had evaporated and I tried the tray.

Was working again. Fine!