• Some users have recently had their accounts hijacked. It seems that the now defunct EVGA forums might have compromised your password there and seems many are using the same PW here. We would suggest you UPDATE YOUR PASSWORD and TURN ON 2FA for your account here to further secure it. None of the compromised accounts had 2FA turned on.
    Once you have enabled 2FA, your account will be updated soon to show a badge, letting other members know that you use 2FA to protect your account. This should be beneficial for everyone that uses FSFT.

Pump Controler?

Six

Limp Gawd
Joined
Mar 15, 2002
Messages
353
I want to make a controler for my pump, obviously my pump uses about 4amps so it would have to be rather beefy. What I need is a fan controler that handles, I think 48w. I built a fan controler once that could handle the power but I have long lost both it and its instructions. I'm curious to know if anyone has any designs for one.????
 
hi

maybe you could use a normal light-dimmer.Just buy one at you're hardware-store.
You've got them in all kinds and sizes.And most can handle 100Watts and more.
But why, is the pump making to much noise? The more flow the better cooling. ;)

Grtz
 
What pump is it? You will not be able to throttle an AC-powered pump by regulating voltage, since rotation speed is dictated by the frequency (60Hz) which is going to stay the same. A dimmer or voltage regulator circuit will most likely work for a DC pump though.
 
Interesting thread :)

As it turns out the Aqua Computer Aquastream (based on 1046) made by Eheim has a 12vdc controller that turns it to 9vac and that is what the pump runs on natively. The fun part is that they have a fan controller called an Aquaero that somehow is able to change the AC frequency in Hz to overclock the pump to equal the output of a 1048! Now how they did this is not clear to me, but it does indeed work. If you could figure out what they did then you could do the same :D
 
its a 12v 4amp pump... I will give the light dimmer a shot.
 
Top Nurse said:
Interesting thread :)

As it turns out the Aqua Computer Aquastream (based on 1046) made by Eheim has a 12vdc controller that turns it to 9vac and that is what the pump runs on natively. The fun part is that they have a fan controller called an Aquaero that somehow is able to change the AC frequency in Hz to overclock the pump to equal the output of a 1048! Now how they did this is not clear to me, but it does indeed work. If you could figure out what they did then you could do the same :D

you can do this with any ac motor so long as you have the equipment to change the frequency. It's the best way to up the speed of the motor w/o loosing torque.
 
wtiger said:
you can do this with any ac motor so long as you have the equipment to change the frequency. It's the best way to up the speed of the motor w/o loosing torque.

Could you point me to somewhere I might find some circuits I could build to use on other pumps?
 
Don't know of any off hand, but I'm sure a google search would get you some info pretty fast. I learned this from a friend of mine who used to be an electrical engineer. You'll want to look for something called a frequency converter.
 
wtiger said:
you can do this with any ac motor so long as you have the equipment to change the frequency. It's the best way to up the speed of the motor w/o loosing torque.
just confirming :D
Controling AC-frequencies is expensive and a bit hard, most people only have the possibility to change the voltage or current.And so by changing powerratio of the motor, we can adjust speed by indeed 'de-increasing torque. Maybe you'll find a small frequency-controller for singlecoiled-motors.Voltage and current-regulators always get the job done for me at least. ;)



Grtz
 
the light dimmer might or might not work.

common household dimmers use the same pulse width modulation technology as PWM fan controllers, and those can certainly be used to throttle DC pumps.

i believe that there would be some differences on the input side of the dimmer that might not lend themselves well to accepting DC current.
 
DFI Daishi said:
the light dimmer might or might not work.

common household dimmers use the same pulse width modulation technology as PWM fan controllers, and those can certainly be used to throttle DC pumps.

i believe that there would be some differences on the input side of the dimmer that might not lend themselves well to accepting DC current.


Hm, I was assuming the use of a resistance-based dimmer. PWM might work for DC as well, although I'm not sure how well the pump will like it- it will basically be turning on and off constantly. It may not work at certain "speeds".
 
zer0signal667 said:
Hm, I was assuming the use of a resistance-based dimmer. PWM might work for DC as well, although I'm not sure how well the pump will like it- it will basically be turning on and off constantly. It may not work at certain "speeds".
well.......i'm assuming that since dangerden outright says that DC cooling pumps are okay with being throttled using a fan controller that it is the case.

i was under the impression the most PWM controllers opperate at at least a few KHz, which should be above the pole switching speed of the motor, should it not?

now, maybe my pal over in elec eng. is being fed a line of BS, but he pointed out that a dimmer taking a 120 watt bulb down to 20 watts, which a dimmer can to, would have to get rid of 100 watts of heat, if it opperated using a variable resistor. since a dimmer does not have a big heatsink and fan i assumed that he was correct........

i know for sure that theater lighting boards use PWM, i'm just not sure how closely AC PWM relates to DC PWM.

edit: my PWM controlled fans will not work at certain speeds either, however that causes them to jump between particular speeds,(instead of smoothly changing) as opposed to stopping the fans. perhaps i should have read your post more closely the first time.
 
Back
Top