DIY Peristaltic Pump: Cultural Teachings of Glorious Nation of Kazakistan

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A warm hello from a friendly nation of Kazakistan to friendly reefers from US&A!

In this thread I am going to show a step-by-step guide on how to make a DIY peristaltic pump (similar to Kamoer FX-STP pump).


I have already built such pump for my DIY calcium reactor and it's been working hard to keep alk levels stable since June this year. However since I consider peristaltic pump to be one of the most critical devices for my SPS tank - I had long planned to build a second spare pump.

Build details to follow..
 
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In order to build the pump, the following components are required:

- 3-4 sheets of 5mm A4 size white perspex acrylic (I buy pre-cut A4 size acrylic as it's cheaper)
- 18x ball bearings 4mm/13mm ID/OD
- M4 countersunk screws and M4 nuts
- M3 screws
- Tensol 12 acrylic glue
- Arctic F8 PWM cooling fan (80mm diameter)
- Rotary encoder
- Mean Well Constant Voltage LED Driver 25.2W 12V
- Murata Power Solutions Through Hole Switching Regulator, 5V dc Output Voltage, 1.5A Output Current
- TMC2209 v1.2 stepper motor driver
- Arduino Nano
- Samsung IC2 SSD1306 OLED DIsplay
- Santoprene tubing 3.2mm bore
- Push-on straight connector,5mm ID hose
- JST crimp connectors
- 22 AWG wires
- 100uf 24V capacitor
- 90 degree angle mini USB male to female extension connector (30cm length)
- C14 panel mount power connector
 

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In order to build the pump, the following components are required:

- 3-4 sheets of 5mm A4 size white perspex acrylic (I buy pre-cut A4 size acrylic as it's cheaper)
- 18x ball bearings 4mm/13mm ID/OD
- M4 countersunk screws and M4 nuts
- M3 screws
- Tensol 12 acrylic glue
- Arctic F8 PWM cooling fan (80mm diameter)
- Rotary encoder
- Mean Well Constant Voltage LED Driver 25.2W 12V
- Murata Power Solutions Through Hole Switching Regulator, 5V dc Output Voltage, 1.5A Output Current
- TMC2209 v1.2 stepper motor driver
- Arduino Nano
- Samsung IC2 SSD1306 OLED DIsplay
- Santoprene tubing 3.2mm bore
- Push-on straight connector,5mm ID hose
- JST crimp connectors
- 22 AWG wires
- 100uf 24V capacitor
- 90 degree angle mini USB male to female extension connector (30cm length)
- C14 panel mount power connector

What was the cost of these components?
 
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What was the cost of these components?
About £100 here in the UK (versus retail price of Kamoer of £240).

Just to pre-empt another discussion: as I was explaining in another thread - I build DIY devices for my tank NOT because I am trying to save money. I just enjoy the process over alternative ways to spent my free time (beer lifting and/or TV staring). Building each new device allows me to further my DIY skills - making it possible to work on much more challenging/complex projects.

One other advantage of DIY pump vs commercially made one is that you can program your own (completely flexible) schedule:
- I am currently running my DIY CarX only during the daytime only (from 8am to 6pm), so both CarX and peristaltic pump switch off when photoperiod is over
- as I was measuring alk levels (using DIY alk monitor), I concluded (almost there) that roughly 20% of daily alk consumption is during night hours, specifically between 3am and 8am
- therefore my alk level drops by about 0.2 DKH between evening and the following morning

With the DIY peristaltic pump I can program-in an adjustment curve, i.e. for a specified volume per minute I can dose 80% during the day and 20% between 3am and 6am. I am really not sure if you can do that with Kamoer..

Below is the picture (taken in the morning) of the most recent DKH measurements (last column):

20210901_093956.jpg
 
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..additional component required are:
- 2x RS PRO M8 x 30mm Shoulder Bolt
- 2x Easyfix A2 stainless steel flange head nuts
- 10x Easyfix A2 stainless steel large flat washers M8 x 2mm
- 4x M3 washers
- Nema 17 stepper motor, 0.71NM 1.8A
 
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The first step is to make roller and pivot assembly from acrylic.

Using A4 acrylic (it's a very convenient size in many applications, as you will later see!!!) we draw the following cut-out guides (all sizes are in mm):

20210901_195748.jpg

The circles are 24mm - 1mm smaller radius than the hole drilling guide (I will explain later why you need it)

20210901_195810.jpg
 
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I will be using a 50mm holesaw to cut out the inner circle - this will form the rotary bit. Pivot will be made from the remaining part of acrylic.

The holesaw has something called arbor - it's an assembly that allows holesaw to be attached to the drill. The arbor has a guide drill bit that's removable. Guide drill bit keeps holesaw centred when drilling.

20210901_202235.jpg

20210901_202249.jpg

Guide drill bit is a great thing - but I don't want to have a hole in the centre of my rotary disk, therefore I will have to remove the guide drill bit altogether. In order to keep the holesaw centred however, I made a wooden holesaw guide (by using 50mm holesaw with the guide drill bit attached).

The circle with a 24mm radius drawn above is there in order for me to centre the wooden holesaw guide prior to drilling (as it has no useful "centre point").

20210901_204529.jpg

I will apply a bit of oil on the inside of the wooden guide so that holesaw has minimal friction with wood when drilling the hole.
 
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The wooden guide is then clamped over acrylic:

20210901_205807.jpg

20210901_205821.jpg

I use Bosche battery operated drill (nothing as fancy as a drill press that I can't own due to insufficient storage space and a very strict wife)

20210901_210332.jpg

20210901_210336.jpg

20210901_210506.jpg
 
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The accuracy of drilled holes (how centred they are) does not matter at this stage - they just need to be "reasonably centered", so 1mm-2mm tolerance (upwards or sideways) is OK. The disk edges can end up a bit sloped as a result of drilling (the holesaw can still wobble a bit - resulting in less than perfectly made disks)- that does not matter either.

The next step is to cut the remaining acrylic into 4 pieces along the drawn guide lines.
 
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I dont use any fancy cutting tools (although I have a bosch battery operated handsaw). All you need is a fine toothed hand saw. I use Irwin 990 - which has 9 teeth per inch.

Coloured perspex is vastly different from old style transparent acrylic - it does not melt and does not crack/snap when cut. It is very easy to cut even long lengths - when I made my DIY light bar, I made two 1.2m long cuts that had less than 1mm tolerance!

Best (and fastest) results are achieved if acrylic is firmly clamped.

20210901_212025.jpg

20210901_212314.jpg
 
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Now I will wash/dry and align these 4 pieces of acrylic (as good as I can - they will be somewhat uneven however hard you try to cut them accurately, but that's no problem - as you will see later) and glue them together using Tensol 12 to form a single 20mm thick piece.

After Tensol 12 is applied to each surface - I normally clamp them firmly together and put into oven @85 degrees Censius (185F) for fast curing (15 min is all that's needed before the part can be worked on further - e.g. cut/sanded). They can be left to cure at normal temperature - but I have worked with acrylic for so long that I am very comfortable with fast curing process..

20210901_215906.jpg

20210901_220114.jpg
 
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Using a compass tool I locate the centre of the disk by trial-and-error.

20210901_220910.jpg

20210901_221122.jpg
 
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The Nema 17 motor has a 5mm motor shaft - so ultimately I want the central hole to be 5mm.

I start by drilling a small "crater" using a smaller diameter drill bit (3.5mm). I start with an absolutely small crater - then measure how central it is, then I deepen it a bit and measure again. If the crater is a bit off centre, I direct the drill at a small angle, so as to move the crater centre in the right direction.

The crater will serve as a guide when I will ultimately drill a 5mm hole.

20210901_222007.jpg

20210901_222032.jpg
 
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I use caliper extensively - especially when avoding the pain of reading the small text (that gets worn out over time) on the side of the drill bit!

You don't want to make a mistake of picking a drill bit of wrong diameter!

20210901_223039.jpg
 

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