Hello Everyone
This project all stems back to a vague memory I had of a video. All I could remember was a few seconds of video footage of a Japanese fresh water spring. Something about the way the water bubbled up really tickled me. Having some free time and a 3d printer I started coming up with a plan.
3:05 here
I could not find the tank I wanted so I have ordered the glass for a low iron tank. 65cm by 25cm by 25cm. I really wanted to incorporate an airlift pump into the design, a pump would have been much easier but hey ho. Basically I wanted to build an all in one type build. SO I fired up solidworks and started messing about. After a lot of hee and hawing I came up with this
It has 2 airlift tubes integrated into it. I was happy with the design so I made a testing version of the design. I asked chatgpt for a lot of help and they ran a bunch of calculations to get an idea of flow rates possible with my size restrictions.
Then I printed this test pump. I did some testing in a bucket and with a 6 watt pump the flow was pretty crazy
So I had a pump with a bottom outflow and a top. I added some gates to the final design to adjust flow. I started brainstorming how to achieve the bubbling in sand and designed a pancake outflow seen here. This is 4 versions in so far haha.
Again I got to 3d printing and had my prototype. From the get go I realized I had to retain the sand so I printed a little collar for the puck.
I grabbed a plastic tub from Tesco and set up my little test stand with some sand. To my surprise it seemed to work exactly as I hoped. I am still waiting on the glass and designing the roof but I will finish this post with a preview of my set up
This project all stems back to a vague memory I had of a video. All I could remember was a few seconds of video footage of a Japanese fresh water spring. Something about the way the water bubbled up really tickled me. Having some free time and a 3d printer I started coming up with a plan.
3:05 here
I could not find the tank I wanted so I have ordered the glass for a low iron tank. 65cm by 25cm by 25cm. I really wanted to incorporate an airlift pump into the design, a pump would have been much easier but hey ho. Basically I wanted to build an all in one type build. SO I fired up solidworks and started messing about. After a lot of hee and hawing I came up with this
It has 2 airlift tubes integrated into it. I was happy with the design so I made a testing version of the design. I asked chatgpt for a lot of help and they ran a bunch of calculations to get an idea of flow rates possible with my size restrictions.
Then I printed this test pump. I did some testing in a bucket and with a 6 watt pump the flow was pretty crazy
So I had a pump with a bottom outflow and a top. I added some gates to the final design to adjust flow. I started brainstorming how to achieve the bubbling in sand and designed a pancake outflow seen here. This is 4 versions in so far haha.
Again I got to 3d printing and had my prototype. From the get go I realized I had to retain the sand so I printed a little collar for the puck.
I grabbed a plastic tub from Tesco and set up my little test stand with some sand. To my surprise it seemed to work exactly as I hoped. I am still waiting on the glass and designing the roof but I will finish this post with a preview of my set up
