Need to water your plants? Pump some coolant on a mill? Fill a watermelon with booze? Never fear, because the third greatest Canadian behind [Alan Thicke] and [Bryan Adams] is here with the solution to all your problems! It’s a cordless pump for desktop CNC, repair, and horticulture that automates daily chores and pumps out exact amounts of liquid.
[Chris], [AvE], Bright Idea Workshop, or, ‘that guy that records videos in his shop’ is rather well-known around these parts; we’ve seen him make an $80,000 gold-plated cutting fluid pot, a copper laminate desk, and recharge his cell phone with a car and a pencil. He’s very, very good at futzing around in his shop and the dialog is the closest YouTube will ever get to Click and Clack the Tappet Brothers, albeit without wheezing laughter.
The Kickstarter is for a rechargeable cordless pump, controlled by a microcontroller, that dispenses liquids of varying viscosity onto the item of your choice. It’s perfect for adding cooling to a drill press, watering plants, or something or everything involving beer.
Details on the pump are a little sparse, but given the liquid never touches the pump we’re putting money on some type of peristaltic pump. Add volume measurement, programmable flow rate adjustment, a timer, and dispensing programmable volumes of liquid, and you’ve got something useful.
Thanks [Scott] for the tip.
Looks well thought out and well built. I just wish I had a use for one beyond maybe automated breakfast cereal milk dispensing.
But can you really put a price on automatic cereal?
Would you then want to control it with a wireless intreface or via a cereal connection?
Har.
Reminds me of Hewlett-Packard’s program code name for a serial interface for the HP-41C calculator: “Special K”
Lol you guys are killing me!
How is Alan Thicke a better Canadian than William Shatner??
How is he not?
I can imagine Alan Thicke saying “Sorry”.
At least there was no mention of Bieber…oops, until now. Dooh!
How are any of those better than Chris Hadfield? I can think of plenty of Canadians that are better than a few pop icons (Bryan Adams,,, Sheesh!!).
I’d like to see the inside of the pump assembly, myself.
It’s obviously a peristaltic pump, but as a great fan of [Chris]’s videos I know that the tolerances in many of his projects are “..Close enough for the girls I go out with” which can be a problem with peristaltic pumps since you’re trading off accuracy/pump rate against squeezing the tubing completely flat (which makes a very short service life).
Good quick discussion (not mine) here: http://robotics.stackexchange.com/questions/1167/can-the-rate-of-peristaltic-pumps-flow-be-accurate-across-changes-in-fluid-visc
I notice that the tube is replaceable. It even mentions “swap out the tubing to pump different fluids without cross contaminating.” So if the tube wears out, just replace it?
Peristaltic pumps output a pulsatile pressure waveform. Fine for IV lines and heartlung bypass pumps but not so good for liquid chromatographs. In the medical field companies give you the pumps and charge for the IV tubing. I’m trying to think of a local source for silicone tubing but can’t. It used to be at the local hardware store.
Local hobby shop for gas model cars and airplanes
I recognize the pump from http://www.adafruit.com/product/1150.
Uses approx 4mm outer diameter, 2mm inner silicone tubing
Working Temperature: 0℃ – 40 ℃
Motor voltage: 12VDC
Motor current: 200-300mA
Flow rate: up to 100 mL/min
Weight: 200 grams
Dimensions: 27mm diameter motor, 72mm total length
Mounting holes: 2.7mm diameter, 50mm center-to-center distance