What challenges will you face – making your own pump.

Here are the some of the major skill sets you will need to build a DIY pump.

  • 3d printing – setup, stl files, printing, diagnosing printing faults – warped prints, light weight prints, cleaning up the printed part to acheive parts fit.
  • CAD skills -you might not have to make changes to the chosen pumps cad files – perhaps you can source the identical components the designer(s) used, but you will need to be able to examine the CAD files to help with assembly.
  • Mechanical Assembly – working with just an odd photo or two, you will need to mechanically assemble the motors, rods, bearings, couplings, 3d printed parts – you will have to make it all fit together. It basically will but there possibly going to be assembly issues.
  • Electronics Assembly – soldering – you probably cannot escape soldering. Basic electronics knowledge working with circuit boards, wires, motors, micro-controllers.
  • Programming – micro controllers – loading code into micro controllers via their specific programming tools – not hard but there’s a learning curve.
  • Programming – software. If your chosen project isnt mature or doesn’t offer the pumping feature you need you will need to dig into the project’s software code and make changes, then upload to your pump and test, and make corrections.
  • Electronics, Mechanical, and Software debugging and fault finding techniques. These will feature highly.

I didn’t make this list to put you off attempting to build your own pump, but I am a little frustrated with some folks who claim commercial pumps are over priced – you get a lot for your money. Turns out a lot of people make DIY pumps for around $US100 but they don’t get the polished and fully featured pump that say $US500 would buy.

DIY pumps are a good thing, they will pump your fluids depending on your needs for repeat-ability and accuracy and how well your pumping application can with stand the fiddly and fuzzy bits brought about by the DIY pump’s lack of sophistication.

Hey why not consider Used Pumps