A Laminar Flow Nozzle

A few years ago Hackaday featured a laminar project which recently inspired [Kurt] to create his own. His goal is to create a computer controlled night time light show synchronized with music.

The laminar nozzle shown in the picture above is built with 800 drinking straws all placed in parallel inside a 4″ PVC pipe. The water input is a 3/4″ garden hose adapter, perpendicular to the flow of the output nozzle. The built therefore consists of cleaning sponges placed near the water inlet, followed by the straws and an inch gap to the exit nozzle. To get a nice flow, the edge of the exit nozzle must be as sharp as possible. [Kurt] purchased a brass pipe end cap, drilled a hole in it and sanded it to create a sharp inner edge. For the lights, he used 2 high power LEDs mounted with 3mm fiber optic cables, driven at around 5 Watts.

The link to the article that inspired Kurt can be found here.

10 thoughts on “A Laminar Flow Nozzle

  1. I like the simplicity of this one. I’ve been meaning to make one of these myself for a long time but when reading up on it the projects I’ve seen before seemed a bit convoluted. Looks like you can get away with something simpler and still have a very nice result.

  2. I thought I recognized that blogspot domain! I’ve been following his work electrifying a porsche 911.

    Now my mind immediately goes to combining these projects. Could one set up windshield washers like this as a showpiece? Imagine someone slowly creeping down the block (else wind would annihilate the laminar streams) at night when suddenly two greeen liquid arcs come up over the hood and splash on a windshield?

    1. If you did, they’d do a horrible job of washing the windshield.
      If it’s just for show, add water jets that shoot forward. Then add a Star Wars “PEW-PEW-PEW” sound and pretend they’re lasers.

  3. Still don’t get why the straws are needed. Does anyone know of a hack trying it without the straws? Cause to me it looks like the most important thing is the sharp edge.
    The second link tells that the turbulence or what ever is filtered by the foam, which also slos down the water. So why would one need the straws if theere is a foam?
    There is also a lot of space between the straws and the nozzle where the water comes out.

  4. I don’t get a plug hack-a-day?

    http://hackaday.com/2012/07/24/create-a-laminar-flow-jet-wthout-pesky-fiber-optics/

    @sneakypoo
    There is a lot of very simple designs, they mostly revolve around the amount of water that you want to move. Similar to the current within a circuit, you require a large source of EMF to supply that current. Therefore to get a stream to shoot over 3 feet requires a pump that will cost you upwards of $1000. Also things like height of the jet above the pump, storage and bypass tanks all have a direct relationship to the current of the stream exiting the jet.

  5. it is coming perfectly by keeping horizontally but when i mount vertically on ceiling the flow is not laminar. kindly suggest me how can i overcome this problem. My task is to get the laminar flow from ceiling.

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