Water Pump

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Our pump is the peristaltic pump, which falls into the category of positive displacement pumps. It works by using a rotating roller to squeeze a flexible tube along a curved casing, causing the water to be pushed along the radius. Typically, the peristaltic pump transfers sterile fluids or handles volatile chemicals because the liquid within the pipe never has to come into contact with the moving roller. The function of the pump can also be easily controlled by the speed and direction of the motor, making it flexible.  

Our overall goal of making a functional pump did not come to fruition, but our team gained much valuable knowledge from this project. We primarily learned about the significance of budgeting accordingly, considering the manufacturability of a part when designing it, and the importance of proper tolerancing and fitting. Early on in our process, we planned to use the majority of our budget on the first iteration of the pump. While this does make sense for a waterfall design process, it left us with less of the budget for fixes that we needed to make during the testing phase. We then learned that designing for manufacturability was a key factor for success. We had a clear plan going into each manufacturing shift, and we were still pressed for time. If we hadn’t had detailed discussions of how each part would be made, our parts would have been rough around the edges or incomplete. The last lesson we learned was the importance of having the correct tolerancing, especially when working with parts that need to be press fitted. Our ball-bearing borehole was less than 1/32’’ too large because the shop lacked the correct tool. But that difference caused a massive difference when our ball bearing slid out during high motor speeds. Some less technical lessons we learned were about the importance of communication and having scheduled meetings to keep everyone on task and updated on 10 new ideas. We also learned that scheduling isn't perfect because everyone's life is different, and we all have different commitments to fulfill on random schedules. 

If we were to do this project again, we would likely seek a more straightforward pump casing that did not include acrylic, as the load on our pump was visibly higher than we had expected. We would have also shrunk our design to all for easier pipe compression. Another issue we ran into was that the hex nuts holding our rollers to the spinners would unwind when the motor was active, so we would devise a new way to connect the rollers to the spinners.