DIY 5 station doser build - complete step by step

[fragmatic]

Really cool thanks for sharing looks amazing u shoold sell the kits for this build with instructions

thanx, but first I need to make one that works. so hang around and make sure it does before you invest in parts.. LOL... ;)

 

[Dave3112]

Following along! Great work so far!!

 

[fragmatic]

Now I am going to solder and wire the coil side of the 115AC ice cube relays. I made 5 each 3" long black and red wires and soldered a spade to one end. Then I soldered the other end to the terminals on the ice cubes which are internally wired to the coils. At that point I stabbed the spades on the other end of the wires into the outlet side of the clock work timers being sure to poke the black one into the smaller slot.

Then I stuck the relays (ice cube is slang for relays that are shaped like an ice cube, with clear covers) into the enclosure. It wasn't hard, I just put sticky putty on them and pushed them down where I wanted them to live forever.

For the tech geeks

I am using the ice cubes to be controlled my the clock work timers, then I can use a set of normally open contacts to fire the 6062 timers, which will turn on the their pump when they get power & shut it off again at the time interval I decide. At least that is the game plan. LOL.. it will work! Using relays allows me to isolate the 12 VDC circuit from the 115 VAC circuit.

 

[fragmatic]

Following along! Great work so far!!

Thank you, it is a labor of love..'cause... I LOVE projects.

 

[fragmatic]

Next I wired a blue wire from the Normally Open center tap of the relay to the + terminal of the 6062 board, per each station. I placed several wire tie down pads inside the enclosure to use to secure the wires later. This is totally optional. However, I do want to make sure I use care not to let wires get in the way of the clock work timers dials rotating freely when I close the box. Some wires will gain a fair amount of slack and be pushed in to a different shape when I close the box.

 

[fragmatic]

Next I have added a terminal strip to bring in the 115VAC and the 12 VDC. From the -12 VDC junction on that strip I daisy chain to all the -12VDC terminals of the 6062 boards. I did that with green wire.

 

[fragmatic]

Now I solder in the motor hot wires to the common contact of the relay on the 6062 circuit board.

 

[fragmatic]

Time to solder the grounds to the motors. I daisy chained them together then to the green wire lead on the nearest 6062 as shown.

 

[fragmatic]

The last wires are the hot 12VDC + side to the normally open contacts of the 6062 circuit board. They are the thinner darker red wires in daisy chain to each 6062 board.

While you ware in the bathroom I wired the 12 VDC plus and minus & the 115VDC to the input terminal strip. Before I did that I drilled two 3/8" holes and installed grommets in them for the wires to come in through. ...OH, and I stuck the power supply to the front face of the enclosure.

You can see them at the lower right of the image.

I tested all circuits and everything works perfectly!!!!

Tomorrow evening I will tag down the wires and start working on the dose bottles, tubing, racking, and timing. ;) ;)

 

[Chameleon]

very nice! glad everything is working well. is there a way to use one power supply without having to worry about only having 1 pump at a time? Like if I got a 12VDC 2amp I could do two at a time, but could I also only do one at a time without having too many amps?? sorry I don't know too much about this topic ;)

 

[fragmatic]

very nice! glad everything is working well. is there a way to use one power supply without having to worry about only having 1 pump at a time? Like if I got a 12VDC 2amp I could do two at a time, but could I also only do one at a time without having too many amps?? sorry I don't know too much about this topic ;)

I understand your question just fine. Yes, if I wanted to be able to run more pumps at the same time (or not worry about that happening) I would just buy or dig out a power supply with 1 amp per station. For example, on this build it would be a 12 VDC 5 amp supply. If fact when I got to where I was wiring in my power supply for this build I stumbled on a 12VDC 4 amp supply in one of my junk drawers and used it instead.

Excellent question!!!

 

[redfishbluefish]

Very impressive DIY……very well documented! Great job. I know nothing about electronics, but feel I could easily assemble one of these with your great instructions.

That being said (again I am ignorant to electronics), I am puzzled by what appears to me to be two timers per pump…..the Wallyworld timer and the 6062 Altronix timer??? I’m sure this will be explained when you get to talking about setting the times.

Also, having a Reefkeeper, couldn’t I simply buy one of these pumps, attached it to an appropriate 12 V power supply, and then plug that into my controller to control the timing of the pump? Twenty dollars per pump, plus a power supply I’m sure I have in a draw in the shop…..done!

Following alone, waiting for the next installment. Nice!

 

[creefer]

Wow. Great job, fragmatic. You werent kidding when you mentioned this in the other thread. Thanks very much for the very clear documentation. I'm no whiz with electronics myself, but it appears with a basic understanding of simple circuits, this would be very easy.

Thanks again and well done!

 

[Zack]

Man I want to make me one! I've been needing to buy one, just didn't want to spend 300 dollars. What would one with three pumps cost?
I saw your post that said 40$ per station, are you calling each pump a station or the entire thing?

 

[creefer]

I think each pump is a station if I understand correctly. I'm in the same position as you, too. I want a 2 or three station unit, but really struggling with the cost.

 

[fragmatic]

Thank you all for the nice comments. I'm half sick with a nasty cold but will try and see if all the meds I've take will let me answer with some kind of intelligence.

If a reef keeper has open contacts available to run devices, then yes you would put a 12 VDC power supply between your pump and one leg of that pair of contact leads. Sorry, I don't know what the out put leads of a reef keeper are wired as.

Yes you will spend about $40 per leg. Each leg needs a pump, 6062 board, ice cube, and a clock work timer. Also the whole unit will need a 12 VDC power supply. If we were to find a 12 VDC clock work timer we could then eliminate the ice cube. But if we could find a 12 VDC clock work timer it most likely be more expensive that a $4 timer and a $7 ice cube. (EDIT: we now have a link to a $2 ice cube)

The clock work timer can only be turned on for something like 15 minute increments. We don't want to run our dose pump for that long. The second timer will fire when the clock work timer gives it power then turn back off at the length of time we set it for. This way we can have the pump run for from 1 second to 60 seconds. One small draw back to 6062 is that it is fussy to set at the low time intervals. My theory here is to dilute the products requiring tiny doses by cutting them with RODI and thus run the pump longer. This also means we are dosing with more accurate proportions. If I cut my iodine two parts RODI to one part solution I now have three times as much product and instead of pumping 1.5 ml I am then pumping 4.5 ml. My time variance delta has 1/3 the effect, or is three times as accurate. (EDIT: as it turns out diluting the products was not necessary, the 6062 performed the task just fine)

(The timer can be replaced with an Artisan 4300A-3-1, but it requires 24 VDC and costs $38 bucks. That means another power supply and another ice cube. (it may be possible that the 4300 will run on up to 24 volts, I will test that "when I get to it" and find out. The 4300 will increment from .1 second to 30 seconds and can have a multi turn pot as the adjustment device, which means time control would be much more finite.)

Again GREAT questions.

 

[MattL22]

Fragmatic i checked out a forum called all about circuits once when I was looking into a diy wave box but found all this stuff way to complicated for me are these type projects something a beginner can read up on and Learn or does it require more schooling ?

 

[fragmatic]

Fragmatic i checked out a forum called all about circuits once when I was looking into a diy wave box but found all this stuff way to complicated for me are these type projects something a beginner can read up on and Learn or does it require more schooling ?

If you learn to or know how to solder, and have a basic knowledge of electricity, and tend to fix your own things around the house and car or truck. They aren't all that difficult.

If you don't now much about electricity get a book that explains, .....something like Electricity for Dummies or similar (I have no idea if there is a "electricity for dummies"). The best way to learn to solder is to buy an inexpensive build kit of some kind and build it. There are lots of build kits on the market. Keep the first one very simple then build your skills. That way if you bomb it you don't loose the farm.

I'm a retired machine design engineer so I have to make an effort to keep these things simple, I'm not used to doing a step by step that instructs and teaches. This is why I'm so willing to answer questions. It gives me feed back to see how I did.

If you want to DIY a design and build of a wave box you may need some formal electronic schooling. These circuits frequent have proms with firmware programs on them, which takes the education required up another notch.

 

[fragmatic]

OK, boys and girls in the peanut gallery,

This crazy thing works far, far better than I ever expected! It was a bit touchy to adjust to dose amounts, but I was able to get my required 1.5 ml, 2 ml, 4 ml, and 8 ml dose amounts almost dead on. Actually they are as dead on as I can measure. I have two products that dose 4 ml.

What I did was; use a syringe (the one I have been using to do my doses) and inject RODI dose amounts into one of the API test tubes then mark those levels with a sharpie ultra fine point. Then I went through each station and set the timer pot to the time it took to fill the test tube to the respective mark by trial and error. It didn't take very long. It takes a steady hand but it was NOT as hard as I expected and I had no need to dilute any of my products. I really did not want to dilute if I could avoid it. My best guess is it will dose from about 1 ml to somewhere around 32 ml. If you want to you can set the clock work timer to come on more than once a day and break down the larger doses into smaller increments.

Bottom line at this point is.... drum roll.....I am pleased, and.. I am not easy to impress. Now I am going to set it up on the bench and have it dose RODI from a jug into 5 containers of some kind and see how consistent it is. I ran several test samples of each pump and couldn't see any delta difference. For my thinking that is plenty close enough. To give you a reference it takes somewhere around 2 seconds to pump 1.5 ml and about 12 seconds to pump 8 ml.

I never expected such outstanding results! I need to do the dance thing because.. I have a dose system!!!

..........now .. I just need to do the "where to put the crazy thing!"

 

[jerl77]

I am impressed great job