Volcano club

I am not really sure the neck size really matters at this point since you don't have enough air in your skimmer Tom. Have you tried rotating the pump yet?
 
<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=13526863#post13526863 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by jnarowe
I am not really sure the neck size really matters at this point since you don't have enough air in your skimmer Tom. Have you tried rotating the pump yet?
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Nope, not yet. I was up all night with a sick child, so between taking care of her through this afternoon and having zero functioning brain cells, the skimmer will have to wait until tomorrow.
 
<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=13524076#post13524076 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by Sparkss
I just got done talking to Jonathan and Sherman and they had a very interesting observation. We know that there are problems injecting too much air and cavitating the Dart. We also know that some of our Dart NWs are "touchy" to try to "dial in", for example mine will cavitate when I feed and half the time I wake up to a cavitating pump in the morning (when it was working fine when I went to bed). The observation was the orientation of the volute on the Volcanos. The output of the pump is parallel to the ground, pointing to the left (when looking at the pump from the wet end). This can be seen clearly enough on the Volcano web site ont he skimmers page (there are larger pictures of the skimmers ther than on the main page to his site). What with the volutes having been carved out to make room for the NWs there is the higher possibility of air pockets forming in the "top" of the volute as it sits (which is actually the right side of the volute, when facing it from the inlet side). I know why Scott built them that way, for pump performance reasons. The more pipe he put between the output of the pump and the skimmer body the more pump performance he lost. But I looked at the Reeflo line and all of them have the pump sitting "upright" w/ a 90 fitting between the output and the skimmer. So maybe there is something to be traded off/gained by changing the pump orientation ? It wouldn't be too terribly difficult since the inlet pipe goes through a uniseal, so it can be pivotted/swung down easily enough, the pump rotated on the feed pipe and a new set of fittings to connect if back to the skimmer (90 and a nipple, both of which I already have left over from the original tank setup).
So that got added to my list of things to try this weekend (barring some event that would prevent me from being able to set aside the time to work on the skimmer, that is). If nothing else it will set the stage and make it easier to change out the pump for a different model if we go that route later on.
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You could be right. I used to force feed with a blower when I had a smaller pump. Mine cavitated too when, with the same concern, connected the pump output in a horizontal manner. I had to change the orientation of the pump, output vertical. Never had cavitation after.
Sorry for your daughter. Hope she will get well soon.
 
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<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=13523304#post13523304 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by dew2loud1
As you mentioned sparkss scott was trying to get the lowest wattage draw on these skimmers since thats what everyone seems to harp on more than anything with skimmers now days. I think that is one of the biggest problems. These skimmers are monsters as are the systems they are being put on and can't be run with small pumps.

Energy's skimmers has two darts as did many of bill wanns skimmers plus were force fed on top of that and they work great. Yes its a higher wattage draw but if your skimmer holds 100 gallons and your system is over a 1000 gallons than I think its unrealistic to expect to run a skimmer of this proportion for under 200 watts.

The bottom line is that a single dart does not and will not have the volute capacity to handle the amount of air that these skimmers need no matter how much is changed with the needlewheel and the bubble plate, the volume needed is at least the capacity of two darts or more on the larger models.

The modified reeflo NW from reef specialty pulls around 100 scfh which is almost double what the stock one pulls at the measly head height of like 20 inches, double that and it drops precipitously, even at 100 scfh your skimmer to get the "PVC white" look would need 200 scfh

Scott was making (I hope still is, I haven't heard from him in four months) a 25.5"x 84" skimmer for me and we had talked about two hammerhead needlewheels or two darts forcefed. I am working on the laguna 4200 as the volute can be increased to 6-8" and forcefed to handle the head height without sacrificing performance, ATB and a few others already have there laguna 4200 versions over 200 scfh which is well more than what two NW darts are getting us.

The problem with all of these is that with the amount of head height on any of the 1860's and bigger you are going to have to forcefeed to get the results you need.

It seems funny that needlewheel/meshwheel is the best technology but I don't think on skimmers this size they are the best idea now, aside from pumps like yeniraki, where they really have the power to push to these head heights.

Seems like the best idea may be the oldest as in what jnarowe has been doing for a while air pump and stones, because honestly if you're already forcefeeding with an alita 60 and up and feeding from the overflow or another pump why run another pump just to chop the bubbles up? Cleaning stones wouldn't be any harder than pulling the pump and cleaning the needlewheel.

I think these skimmers have massive potential but at the size they are built they cannot be run efficiently as if they were the size of a reeflo orca, the orca would fit in the collection cup of most of these skimmers.....

I think for a long term solution, forcefed modified laguna 4200 or equiv.

I've never seen a skimmer with the hammerhead needlwheel other than a modified RK2 so I"m not sure on any verified numbers for them, but they could be a possibility for pulling more air but still don't have the volute size to handle the amount of air that is needed.
Or running a second dart and forcefeeding both, or the final solution converting over to stones......

I'm messing with laguna right now and will look into stones when I get the skimmer, I have one of the original NW darts that I'm going to try to and enlarge the volute on as well and see where that gets me.

Sorry for the book been reading a while and finally decided to respond
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Well said...
What do you think about Nanook"s skimmer? He uses force fed Iwaki 40 and as the photos show, it works great. I would say Iwaki 40 is a rather small pump for such size skimmer.
 
What do you guys mean by 'cavitation'? I dont think its even possible to make these pumps cavitate, in the strict definition of the word. Do you mean 'choke' on too much air?

If you start to get too much air so that the needlewheel is 'slipping', you can make the needlewheel larger to compensate and bring the resistance back up.

What Spazz did to lower the wattage was to pretty much decrease the surface area of the impeller. Just consider a regular water pump... if you start cutting the fins back, it will use less wattage, but it will also move less water. The downside is that if you decrease the surface area too much, you end up killing the motor efficiency (stators are too large for the load, and so they spend more energy on their 'self-induction' than the magnet, and they get warmer).

This is a general statement, but with a needlewheel, you want to INCREASE the interface area of the impeller as much as possible, either in height, diameter, etc... so when the motor is running, its wattage & PF are as close to normal as possible because then it will also run cooler, and usually better. The only problem with this is that the the motor has to start with such a larger impeller when its only 100% water, and with a larger impeller, the pump might 'sputter' unless you force feed it some air to get started. So the most common solution is to trim back the impeller (cut pins, cut mesh, etc) until the motor can start on its own, but still run as close to original specs for wattage as possible. If you start messing around with trying to lower the pump wattage without compensating for it on the electrical end as well (and who here can really do that?) then you are most likely killing motor efficiency. To do a given amount of work, the magnet and inductors are made to a certain size for a reason. If you are trying to lower wattage and retain efficiency, you need a smaller motor... otherwise, you can just plain kill the motor if you dont watch it.

The advantage of the Laguna motors is that with the power factor correction (thats what it really is) circuit, the motor is more able to adjust during startup for more torque, and then when air enters the volute, it can compensate for the change in mixture/density yet retain efficiency.

Otherwise, there are other 'tricks' to allow for sputter free startup yet high power factor when running. They mostly have to do with DC motor applications, but there is no reason you couldnt run some types of 'power control' on an AC motor.

Im working on a 'Pump Ballast' (closest thing to this that makes sense) with this very concept in mind... a 'starter circuit' to aid needlewheels that otherwise sputter at startup.
 
By cavitate we mean that there is more air than water and the pump stops pumping all together. Once it "falls over" into cavitation it usually requires restarting the pump or air source to get it to start pumping anything but air again.
 
DIY Dart Needle Wheel

DIY Dart Needle Wheel

This is my first attempt at making a DIY Dart Needle Wheel .
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Well, I think it is inventive.

Mine is a little different. I am not convinced they actually need needles, but since I didn't know enough about skimmers when i experimented with this, I never got a full foam head before it started burping.

antineedlewheel.jpg


anti-needlewheelpump.jpg


OK...start the flaming! :roll:
 
I'm like you , I try all different types of things . I don't have a lot of money, so I MCGyver most of my stuff . Ted
 
Well, I think the properly mentally equiped skimmer geek like Hahn could make that work and then no one would ever have to buy those stupid NWs. :D
 
That doesn't allow for alot of contact area... esp on a small volute... I think you will find out how larger and larger impellers in a small volute just end up taking up space that could otherwise be holding/moving air. You get to a point where a larger and larger pinwheel just means more of the outer edge is 'spinning its wheels'. The most effective area on a pinwheel is about half way between the axis and the outer diameter of the volute.
 
Don't rain on my parade Hahn. Just because I think I am a genius, doesn't mean I am not. :eek:

Anyway, I messed around with it a bit but didn't have the patience to get too deep, especially since my skimmer was working well as it was. I had just been contemplating switching to a recirc or at least augmenting. It still think there is value in pursuing this style of wheel because it will move a lot of water.
 
Not too sure if I qualify for the club or not. I bought this skimmer from Jayybird here on RC. He said it was built by Scott and Bill Wann, but I don't know for sure. It looks similar to some of the earlier skimmers Scott was building. What do ya think?

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<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=13548338#post13548338 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by hahnmeister
reefrubble, more pins... lots more pins. or maybe weave some mesh in.

jnarowe, whats in that impeller?
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Hahn reefrubble is using 8-32 screws,do you think 4-40's would work better if he used more of them?
 
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