Last year when bookseller Blackwells installed an Espresso Book Machine at its London branch on Charing Cross Road, I made a diary note to go along to check it out once it had been up and running for a few months - part of my ongoing mission to try out new types of printing service for myself whenever practical.

As it happens, a few months turned into the best part of a year, and I finally made it to the shop yesterday evening.

I was greeted by a forlorn sight, as the system was not functioning and had a sign on it saying "The Espresso Book Machine is currently offline for essential maintenance. We apologise for the inconvenience".

I asked a passing member of staff if the thing ever actually worked, the answer was "yes" but it also transpired that it has been out of action FOR THE PAST MONTH.

Turns out that a part, something to do with the gluing, has broken and seemingly it's a part nobody at manufacturer On Demand Books imagined would ever break... Whoops, talk about a classic case of single point of failure.

On Demand Books has made some pretty audacious claims for its system, take this from its website: "What Gutenberg's press did for Europe in the 15th century, digitization and the Espresso Book Machine will do for the world tomorrow.... Library quality paperbacks at low cost, identical to factory made books, printed direct from digital files for the reader in minutes, serving a radically decentralized world-wide multilingual marketplace."

Well, sort of. The quality of the samples on display at Blackwells looked pretty ropey to me. And surely reliability will need to improve enormously before Blackwells rolls this out to more of its branches as initially envisaged.

In the meantime, another diary note for a repeat visit has been made and in the interim this video of the Espresso in action will have to suffice.