My peristaltic pumps

Hi -- I just joined, and I saw several peristaltic pump builds posted here, so I thought I'd add my own. I know when I did these over the course of the year or so, I couldn't find many other people doing the same. Glad to see love for the peristaltic!

Here is the first one I put together, it is cobbled together out of bought materials. All ebay purchases:





I get matched variable flow up to 1/3 gallon per minute which is perfect for fly sparging and run off. The pump head is mounted on the drive shaft of the motor and gives me just shy of 1 gpm.

The next one is truely DIY. I use it to transfer through the CFC to the fermenter. It is turned out of UHMW stock. There is no shroud, but the tension on the silicone tubing is sufficient to give me good occlusion. It self primes, but not when it is pulling through the CFC. But gravity from the BK does the trick and after it is going it give me positive displacement.







This is a picture of the pump head, with the rollers removed. The rollers are attached with a SS bolt and lock nut.



haze

Very nice, I like the compact designs!

Mad props for your fabrication skills.

Interestring design, I would have never guessed you wouldn't need a shroud.
Like the DC variable motor.

What kind of RPM's are we talking about vs. flow rate?

3/8" or 1/2" tubing?

xd_haze said:

Hi -- I just joined, and I saw several peristaltic pump builds posted here, so I thought I'd add my own. I know when I did these over the course of the year or so, I couldn't find many other people doing the same. Glad to see love for the peristaltic!

Here is the first one I put together, it is cobbled together out of bought materials. All ebay purchases:

I get matched variable flow up to 1/3 gallon per minute which is perfect for fly sparging and run off. The pump head is mounted on the drive shaft of the motor and gives me just shy of 1 gpm.

The next one is truely DIY. I use it to transfer through the CFC to the fermenter. It is turned out of UHMW stock. There is no shroud, but the tension on the silicone tubing is sufficient to give me good occlusion. It self primes, but not when it is pulling through the CFC. But gravity from the BK does the trick and after it is going it give me positive displacement.

Click to expand...

Dude, with all due respect, aside from the purely academic and experimental side of this type of pump, what's the draw??? I see more cash there than a nice practical pump would cost. I realize they are positive displacement and all, but wtf....

A peristaltic pump should be self priming, and should prime from a significant height. One bubble and my March pumps become expensive decorations to the brew rig. If I can find something like this, I'll gladly sell my "nice practical pumps".

Kudos on the homebuilt one. I'm inspired. Fine work!

Nice! Where'd you get the pump heads? Cole Parmer? Do you have a part number?

Yuri_Rage said:

Nice! Where'd you get the pump heads? Cole Parmer? Do you have a part number?

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I got the pump heads on ebay. They are Masterflex 7035-21. These pump heads have four SS rollers and take L/S number 35 tubing. That tubing is ½” OD and 5/16” ID. At 600 RPMS these pumps deliver about 2300 mL/min. I’m getting half that at max speed. The pumps deliver 3.8 mL/min per 1 RPM.

The motor is a permanent magnet Baldor 90 VDC gear motor. It has a 8:1 reduction on it that delivers an output of about 300 RPMs on dual shafts. It is a ¼ HP motor which is torque overkill for the pump heads but works nicely. Since it is DC, I needed to find a supply. I could have used two different rectifier diode setups, one giving a half-wave rectification, the other giving full. That would have given me a two speed pump, either ~500 mL/min or ~1000 mL/min. I could have tweaked it with power resistors; not ideal but passable. Instead, I elected to find a DC motor control, which gives me a fully adjustable pump. DC Motor Control: KB Electronics KBIC-120, model number 9429.

haze

sudbuster said:

Dude, with all due respect, aside from the purely academic and experimental side of this type of pump, what's the draw??? I see more cash there than a nice practical pump would cost. I realize they are positive displacement and all, but wtf....

Click to expand...

I have about $120 invested in the two head pump. Of course, if the parts were purchased at retail, it would be very very expensive. I bought the motor in a non-working state. The insides were rusted and the magnets broken. I cleaned it and repaired the permanent magnets with jb weld. I bought it just for the gear head, expecting to need to replace the motor and got lucky The pump heads can often be found on ebay used or surplus, which is where I got them.

The completely diy motor cost very little. Its only a few dollars worth of UHMW and the motor was maybe 40 dollars.

haze

Just bought a motor and controller w/7 heads on eBay (4 of which take #35 tubing). The lot cost $150 and appears ready to use. It's used and in supposedly working condition. Even if the motor is DOA, the pump heads were worth the purchase.

I'll start a thread when I start messing with it. Thanks for the details!

Yuri_Rage said:

Just bought a motor and controller w/7 heads on eBay (4 of which take #35 tubing). The lot cost $150 and appears ready to use. It's used and in supposedly working condition. Even if the motor is DOA, the pump heads were worth the purchase.

I'll start a thread when I start messing with it. Thanks for the details!

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Thats awesome. Just the 4 pump heads are worth that and more. Are they stackable? Mine aren't, thats why I needed a dual shaft motor.

haze

From the description, they might be (actually talked about being perfect for lab use OR fly sparge homebrewing with equalized flow rates). Look for a thread in a week or two when I get to try them out. Even if they don't stack, I'll be using at least one during my next brew day (I'm positively sick of my March pump and its priming issues). I haven't brewed all summer, and this has me excited to get out there and make some beer!

Yuri, you purchased those from me! The pump does indeed work perfectly, as does the variable speed controller. The 4 pump heads that match, like those seen in this thread, are not stacking, and have the same mounting brackets like seen here. The other three heads are stacking however. You may be able to utilize the inner "wheel" from the three stacking in the other casings, but I believe you'll have to use a smaller diameter tubing.

This pump is nice, but I have gone back to batch sparging/biab due to time being precious with three little kids (6, 3, and 4 months).

I'll be heading to UPS tomorrow for you.

cyberbackpacker said:

Yuri, you purchased those from me! The pump does indeed work perfectly, as does the variable speed controller. The 4 pump heads that match, like those seen in this thread, are not stacking, and have the same mounting brackets like seen here. The other three heads are stacking however. You may be able to utilize the inner "wheel" from the three stacking in the other casings, but I believe you'll have to use a smaller diameter tubing.

This pump is nice, but I have gone back to batch sparging/biab due to time being precious with three little kids (6, 3, and 4 months).

I'll be heading to UPS tomorrow for you.

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Yuri, looks like you made a very nice purchase! You can always find other motors to run the other pump heads, having the brackets will make that easier.

haze

Sweet!

Is the flow rate of these comparable to the march pumps?

Bixter1 said:

Is the flow rate of these comparable to the march pumps?

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I doubt it. I think the largest one he has has a flow rate of 2/3 gallon per minute. (3.8 mL per revolution at 600 rpm = 2.28 L per minute or about .6 gallons per minute)

haze

Got the pumps yesterday and tried one out today. AWESOME! #35 tubing at max speed (600 RPM) measures out about .75 gallons per minute. Infinite adjustment and the ability to equalize flow rates across two (or more) pumps will greatly simplify fly sparging. The max flow rate is just about right for running wort through my chiller. I'm STOKED!

The rotors inside the pumps are just press fit together. They have two positions for the rollers (one for large tubing and one for small tubing). It was fairly easy to rework two of the bigger pumps so that they stack.

Glad you like them Yuri!

Thanks for the great deal, Kevin. Did you ever brew with them?

No problem... being unemployed at the moment, you helped me! And yes, I did use them for a number of brews. I really loved the peristaltic pump, but like I said trying to streamline my process, and the extra cash is very helpful right now too.

Glad they went to someone that could use them and appreciate them.

Where did you get the tubing? It's a bit of an odd size (roughly 1/2" OD, 5/16" ID - I can only find 1/4" and 3/8" ID). I can't find #35 tubing for sale anywhere other than in (expensive and excess) bulk at Cole Parmer.

The tubing that I included came with the pump heads (you get a length of tubing with each new head). I used that and I just inserted a short piece of rigid tubing inside of each end of it and connected the rigid tubing to my thermoplastic tubing from Northern brewer. It worked well for me.

I got ½ OD 5/16” ID silicone tubing from McMaster. It is expensive, at 3.99 per foot, but it is much cheaper than the cole parmer stuff and works well. I'll hunt down the number if you need it. You can then just connect that to your regular tubing using plastic barbs.

haze

Thanks, xd. I'll check McMaster again. I must've overlooked it.

EDIT: Found it. Part #51845K58 - semi-transparent white silicone, exactly what I wanted.

I finally brewed with the "new" pump today. LOVE IT!!!

Great!