Programmable Pump Keeps Its Stick On The Ice

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.

15 thoughts on “Programmable Pump Keeps Its Stick On The Ice

  1. 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

    1. 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?

    2. 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.

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