La Spaziale Pressure Profiling with Vibe Pump

I use an ordinary, inexpensive light dimmer to control the flow rate and pressure on espresso machines with vibratory pumps. I've been doing this for 20+ years and have had great success and have never seen any damage to the motors. The motor is simply a coil of wire (electromagnet) and a diode that converts the AC power to DC pulses. The pump is just a piston that vibrates back and forth in those DC pulses (60 times per second here in America). The dimmer simply shaves off a portion of each cycle so the electromagnet is still pulsing 60 times per second but each pulse is shortened in time so the piston doesn't move with as much force.