The Winter Season: A Personal Struggle

As I stood staring out of my apartment window, gazing at the winter season with disdain, I couldn't help but think about how much I dislike this time of year. The cold temperatures, the lack of sunlight, and the general feeling of gloominess that seems to pervade every aspect of life. For me, it's not just the weather that bothers me; it's also the fact that I'm spending a significant amount of money on heating my home, which in turn affects my gardening plans.

In particular, I've been thinking about building an automatic greenhouse for my garden. This would allow me to control the environment and ensure that my plants receive the right amount of water at all times. To do this, I'll need to measure the humidity of both the air and the earth to determine when to water my plants. Unfortunately, one of the key components for this system is a reliable water pump.

I began searching online for suitable pumps on Amazon but was disappointed to find that there were only a limited selection available. After settling on a twelve-foods six-watt model that promised 8 liters per minute, I decided to purchase it and see how it worked. However, when the pump arrived, I realized that its mechanical construction was quite simple, and I soon discovered that it wasn't exactly what I needed for my gardening project.

The Pump: A Simple yet Satisfying Solution

After considering various options, I decided to stick with the original pump model that I had chosen earlier. To test its performance, I attached a hose to one end and placed a container under the other. As expected, water flowed out of the pump at an impressive rate of 8 liters per minute, which should suffice for my needs.

The TMC 5160D Micro Stepper Motor Driver is a relatively cheap and versatile driver that can be used with a wide range of motors. The TMC-5160d Motor Driver Board comes preprogrammed to work with the TMC5160 stepper motor drivers. The board provides several different configurations, including the configuration I used.

Using the driver has allowed me to build my own custom water pump at home. To start this project, a new Arduino Board was purchased along with an encoder to measure the position of the potentiometer. This allows for precise control over the speed of the motor. The user can also manually adjust the speed using the "A" and "B" buttons located on the board.

The next step in building the water pump involved purchasing a number of components that are required, including a DC motor, some wires, M3 screws, and a wooden board to attach everything to. A few hours were spent assembling all these parts together.

Once all the parts had been put together, I could finally test the water pump to see if it worked as expected. To my disappointment, the pump didn't seem to be working properly with the 32 millimeter wide hoses that I had attached to it. The PE T G material was found not to be strong enough for the wheel shafts of the pump, which led me to realize that building a big and powerful water pump at home wasn't such a good idea.

Conclusion

Based on my experiment, it seems like there's a winner when it comes to choosing between building a custom water pump or buying one from the market. As I mentioned earlier, building your own water pump at home is more of a challenge than you might think, especially if you are not familiar with the process. While it can be very rewarding to create something from scratch, there's also a lot of time and effort that goes into this project.

In this article, we looked at the challenges associated with building an automatic greenhouse for my garden. We discussed how much I dislike the winter season and how it has led me to search for a reliable water pump to control my plants' watering schedule. The process of finding and testing different pumps was described in detail, as well as the various components that are required to build a custom water pump.

As we discussed earlier, building your own custom water pump at home can be challenging but also very rewarding. I built an automatic water pump using an Arduino board and TMC 5160D motor driver, which worked well for small plants in my garden. However, when the requirement increased to pump more water, it was found that the PE T G material wasn't strong enough for the wheel shafts of the pump.

In conclusion, building a big and powerful water pump at home isn't such a good idea because the material used for its components can be weak. Therefore, I would recommend buying a commercial water pump from the market if you need to pump large quantities of water.

WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enIn recent times I noticed while staring out of the windows in my apartment that I really do not like the winter seasonone of the reasons might be that I'm already planning an automatic greenhouse for my garden in which I for exampleWill be measuring the humidity of the air and earth in order to determine when to water the plantsFor such a watering system. I would of course require some sort of water pumpAnd that was the moment. I started searching for chabot foods dc1 on Amazonbut as you can see a nice selection is not that huge andThus I was more or less forced to go with this twelve foods six watt oneWhich according to its product description can do 8 liters per minutes?but after receiving the pump and having a closer look at its I realized that its mechanical construction is rather simple andSince the company try Namek motion control who are not only the sponsor of this videoBut also produce all kinds of awesome ICS for motor controlRecently sent me a brand new prototype motor controller ports along with a powerful BLDC motorI will try to create my own 3d printed water pump with its in this episode of DIY or buyso that at the end we can determine whether it makes sense to DIY a water pump orWhether we should stick to the commercial solution in stanceLet's get startedFirst off we need to understand how these small commercial water pump works in order to create a bigger replicaSo I edit adapters onto the two threads of the pump and then used some sealing tape in order to make everything watertightSo that in the end I could push to 12 millimeter white PVC tubes onto themAt this point I hooked up the power wires to a 12 volt power sourceAnd as you would expect the motor draws currents and something started rotating inside the pumpThat means it was time for me to get two bolts and fill one up with exactly one liter of waterBut the problem was that no matter which PVC tube I placed in the waterThe pump never started transporting the water on its ownThe reason is that this kind of border pump is not a self priming pumpWhich means I have to use some of my own energy in order to get the water to the pumpbut afterwards, it does a job without a problem andIt seems like the water can only enter this way and exit this waynow after doing some more or less scientific measurements, ICalculated an average flow rate of around 10 liter per minutes at an average power draw of around seven point four voltswhich means that the product description was pretty accurate andWith those tests out of the way. I removed the adapters as well as the screws that held the pump togetherAfter removing the front piece, we can see a wheel which was being turned by the utilized motorso what happens is that the water enters through this hole and fills up the entire space around the wheel andWhile the wheel is spinning it accelerates the water which flows radially outwards and into a hole where it exitsbecause of this functional principle this kind of pump is known as a centrifugal pump andTheoretically we should able to 3d print the mechanical parts for itsBut while I was getting close to finishing the first sketch of my own centrifugal pump. INoticed that the user Adolphe overt thingy worsealready created a pretty promising looking design for a bigger one ofCourse, I would not require its motor mounts since I will be using a different motor than him but the main componentsOf the pump looked very niceso I downloaded its files and imported them into the Poussin slicer software in which I obviouslysliced themAfterwards my 3d printed each model with my Prusa i3 Mach 3 3d printer for which I used orangephg filaments to give the pump a bit more mechanical strength asSoon as the three parts were printed. I removed all of their support material which was a bit more difficult than I expectedBut nevertheless as soon as that was done, we can already see how the parts will fit together later onSo now we need to attach the motor in a way to constantly turn the wheelFor that I firstly added a motor shaft coupler to the wheel which coincidentallyAlso perfectly fits onto the motor shaftso the only measurement I required was the height of the wheel shafts, which was around 6 centimeter andWith the measurement and through the help of the datasheet of the motor and it's given mechanical dimensionsI created a fitting motor mounts in 1 to 3d designThe next step was to obviously a 3d printers, which turned out just fineNow to finish the mechanical setup, I firstly created a circle shape with silicone tapewhich I placed inside the ball bearing cavity intoWhich I then placed an ice-cold ball bearing that got hammered into positionNext I added another sealing on the inside for the wheelThen poked a hole through both of them and thus finally added wiill to the system at this pointI started cutting up and adding the silicone tape all around the pumps edgesWhich in retrospective was a dumb idea?So I will not waste time talking about that and just say that the pump was completed afterUsing m3 screws to close everything upNext I got myself a wooden boardsOnto which I firstly marked the pumps mounting holes inOrder to drill them and then to secure the pump to its with m4 bolts and nutsAfterwards, I fixed the motor inside the motor mounts and added the motor shaft coupler to the wheel and the motor shafts inOrder to determine a suitable position for the motor mountsAfter then marking, its mounting holes and drilling them as wellI secured it with m4 bolts and nuts to the wooden boards and just like that the mechanical constructionShould have been completeBut at this point I noticed that the silicone tape inside the pump hinders the movement of the wheelSo I was more or less forced to remove most of its and instead create a watertight seal with corrode hot gluenow finallyWe need to drive the be LEC model for which we could use a generic ear SIABut like already mentioned the tri nameks sent me this new talk 5 prototype boardsThat combines a risk 5 MCU with a motion controller, which is pretty uniqueYou can find more information about the boards on the internetsBut for now, let me tell you that you can configure it with the providedTMC ide or program it directly to the Eclipse software. IAlso need to tell you that I did not write this codes since as you can see, it is fairly complexAnd I'm more of a hardware guyInstead a dynamic employee made it for me and its function is to basically drive the motor with an adjustable rpmaccording to the position of a potentiometerso after programming the bots and hooked up all of the required wires andcomponents and powered everything over 12 volt power source asYou can see the motor rotates without any problems and it seems like our pump is ready for some waterthat is why I added 32 millimeter wide hoses to the entry and exit hole andonce again got myself two boltsBut I realized fairly quickly that this big pump in combination with the big tubes does not work. Well with my small ballsSo I was forced to move to the bathtub in which the DIY pump showcased that it was desperately trying to pump waterBut as soon as I increased the RPM to a certain degreeSomething went terribly wrongit seems like the PE T G material is not strong enough for the wheel shafts andSince I was not even going with half powerit seems like 3d printing a big and powerful water pump is not such a good idea ofCourse there also does exist a promising looking 3d printed micro water pump on ThingiverseWhose material will not experience such big forces in comparison to my big 3d printed pumpBut then again if I want a smooth DC water pump, then I would go with the commercial solutionSo according to my experiments and my own personal opinion I have to say that by is this time?like most of the time the winnerBut what do you think? Let me know your thoughts in the comment section below asAlways thanks for watching. Don't forget to Like share subscribe and hitting the notification PalStay creative and I will see you next time