DIY Dual Head Peristaltic Pump help

<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=11700399#post11700399 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by Horace
I will say that it does/did work just fine in my system as well. I very very rarely ever have to adjust one or the others independently. I agree they may not get used EXACTLY the same, but its very very close, and it takes several weeks if not several months for the imbalance to become an issue.


As for your supersaturation theory, yes, you are correct. But the levels your talking about hardly are super saturated. A level of 430ppm Ca is a far cry from super saturated. Ive run my Ca up over 500ppm and still not had any of the frosting you are talking about. The only time ive ever seen frosting is when I accidentally dosed a full gallon of each part in about 5 mins due to a siphon. This turned the tank pure white...the water was like milk. At that point there was major precip because of the high levels of saturation and sky high PH. If you have frosting, then you must be running your PH sky high.....I never even saw frosting when I had my PH at about 8.6 while dosing kalk.
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Yikes :lol: That is a whole 'nother story all together.

No, when I say "frosting" i mean just the glass and pumps etc get coated with a thin layer of calcium carbonate. I notice this when I try to run my levels any higher than I do (that is how I settled in on my current levels). This could be due to my Magnesium levels also as Mg helps maintain a supersaturated level of Ca and CO3. If your Mg levels are low, then you will not be able to keep your cal and alk levels up. In fact, without Mg, the levels of Cal and Alk in our systems are actually supersaturated. If there was no Mg, then it would precipitate out a lot sooner. ANd, I don't test for Mg as I have not found a good test kit for it. I run pH of 8.2

Either way - all of this is getting off topic of the thread and that is a simple cheap dual dosing pump. It's not perfect, but compared to manual dosing or dosing via some kind of gravity system...It is far superior (IMO).
 
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Bump for info...

Ive decided to give this a try. I just ordered 5 of the pump heads, and im about to order a lot of 7in-lb 3rpm a/c gear motors.

Two things I need to figure out now are how to connect the drive shafts(motors have a cross looking gear on them) and what timers to use.

Any recommendations?
 
I just went to the plumbing section and pieced some brass threaded addapters together. I'm sure you can find something that works.

I use simple digital timers from Lowes. They work fine but you only get a 1min resolution
 
<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=11366362#post11366362 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by Pbrown3701
I then went to Lowe's to get parts for the driveshaft. The motors have a square "female" shaft while the pump heads have "D" shaped male shafts. The solution was to go to the plumbing section to the brass fittings. I used a 1/8" threaded coupler/extender ("close" size); a 1/8" threaded coupler (female on both ends); and a 1/8" cap (cap is a square plug that fits into the motor.

I also had to tap the threaded coupler with a small 4-40 screw that locks in place on the flat part of the "D" on the pump head.

Doesn't look "pretty," but works great. Both motors are identical and the speed is spot-on the same.

What do you think?

1-1.jpg
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I know this is way late but I'm playing catch-up tonight.
If the torque required to turn those pumps isn't too demanding, you could have tried to couple them to the motor with a small length of thick-walled surgical rubber hose - that would fit both shafts tightly.
(and old trick from my slot car days) :)
 
If you want to just buy something inexpensive made for the application check out dumptercnc.com good stuff great price.

Don
 
<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=11843665#post11843665 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by GuySmilie
I know this is way late but I'm playing catch-up tonight.
If the torque required to turn those pumps isn't too demanding, you could have tried to couple them to the motor with a small length of thick-walled surgical rubber hose - that would fit both shafts tightly.
(and old trick from my slot car days) :)
Click to expand...

Guy - thanks for the idea. In this case, i'm not sure how you'd have attached the hose to the motor though. It wasn't a "shaft" persay but rather, a concave square hole. But i can see how your idea could work for other applications.
 
Hey all I just got around to making 5 of these pumps and have run into a bit of a problem.

It appears the motor is turning in random directions. Some times it goes the right way, others it goes in reverse.....

Any ideas whats causing this or how to fix it?
 
most gearmotors like that are unidirectional and should say so on the motor. Mine are CW rotation, but it doesnt matter what way they turn as long as its the same way each time(you just swap the input/output on the pump)

im actually thinking of trying to find some DC motors and inlisting a EE friend of mine to help my make a full dosing controller. Its getting abit old to have to run through calculatoins for deluting the mixture for the ACJR's 1 minute minimum runtime.
 
Little expensive, but i've been traveling a lot and don't have time to shop around. I've got them installed and they work great. They're 1rpm so it's easy to adjust the dosing by changing the time. They dose ~3ml per revolution, so it's fairly good resolution.

They seem to be high quality and they're silent....and certainly cheaper than buying new dosing pumps.
 
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