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DIY Magnetic pump, let's think about it.


Halo_003

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So with the Vortech pumps, they use a propeller with magnets on the shaft, that derive motion from magnets attached to a spinning motor outside of the aquarium glass.

 

Now, I don't think I'm infringing the patent here, if so feel free to remove. Say I wanted to 3D print my own pump, but with a stator to generate a rotating magnetic field, no motor required. In essence, why not remove the motor in a Vortech pump and use a stator to generate your magnetic motion on the propeller? Is it doable?

 

An option would be to build the stator dry side and then get the MP10 wetside assembly to go with it.

 

Vortech patent here: http://www.google.com/patents/US7393188?dq=7393188

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CronicReefer

In all honesty you should be able to reproduce anything you want out of the patent for personal use. It's only when you do things like that for monetary gain do you run into any problems.

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jamescstein

Novel idea. Can't imagine they didn't try it. I expect you can't get the torque on the wet side. Might be interesting to try anyway.

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In all honesty you should be able to reproduce anything you want out of the patent for personal use. It's only when you do things like that for monetary gain do you run into any problems.

True, just being careful lol.

Novel idea. Can't imagine they didn't try it. I expect you can't get the torque on the wet side. Might be interesting to try anyway.

Yeah I'm thinking it could be a fun project. :)

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So with the Vortech pumps, they use a propeller with magnets on the shaft, that derive motion from magnets attached to a spinning motor outside of the aquarium glass.

 

Now, I don't think I'm infringing the patent here, if so feel free to remove. Say I wanted to 3D print my own pump, but with a stator to generate a rotating magnetic field, no motor required. In essence, why not remove the motor in a Vortech pump and use a stator to generate your magnetic motion on the propeller? Is it doable?

 

An option would be to build the stator dry side and then get the MP10 wetside assembly to go with it.

 

Vortech patent here: http://www.google.com/patents/US7393188?dq=7393188

Not sure it's doable or not - but you would think that if the design could be simplified so much it would have been attempted before. Sounds interesting but not sure it would work. Good luck should you decide to pursue the design. As long as you're not copying the design in the patent you can do whatever you want.

 

In all honesty you should be able to reproduce anything you want out of the patent for personal use. It's only when you do things like that for monetary gain do you run into any problems.

So I'm pretty sure a patent technically applies to devices made for personal use as well... More likely is that a company probably wouldnt take legal action against someone tinkering in their garage. But say that person were to post DIY plans that exactly mimicked the original design - I could see some sort of action being taken (probably just a "Please remove this").

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CronicReefer

So I'm pretty sure a patent technically applies to devices made for personal use as well... More likely is that a company probably wouldnt take legal action against someone tinkering in their garage. But say that person were to post DIY plans that exactly mimicked the original design - I could see some sort of action being taken (probably just a "Please remove this").

Yeah I would agree not to publicly post or share any designs or products you make based on the patent.

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Yeah I don't think I'd be interested in exposing myself to the risk of sharing the plans lol. No offense intended just not an area I want to get into.

 

So, any ideas on where I might find a stator for this purpose?

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Novel idea. Can't imagine they didn't try it. I expect you can't get the torque on the wet side. Might be interesting to try anyway.

 

the power consumption to generate to get the torque and the price of the stator may not be cost efficient.

 

second i cant tell if the patent covers the detachable across wall mechanism explicitly... the stator concept may be implicit within the patent, and not a novel concept. the patent is a us patent which is why it has little effect on the jebao device as a China produced good.

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the power consumption to generate to get the torque and the price of the stator may not be cost efficient.

 

second i cant tell if the patent covers the detachable across wall mechanism explicitly... the stator concept may be implicit within the patent, and not a novel concept. the patent is a us patent which is why it has little effect on the jebao device as a China produced good.

Yeah it might be implied, I think it should be okay to just build one for myself at least legally. Not sure on the cost efficiency yet, need to do some actual physics on it lol.

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Yeah it might be implied, I think it should be okay to just build one for myself at least legally. Not sure on the cost efficiency yet, need to do some actual physics on it lol.

 

Im pretty sure you can do anything you want for personal use and in the quest for knowledge. The ramifications of doing that are essentially zero. However you may be in violation of a patent by using one half of the vortec to create a new half to get around the patent.. I am not sure.. Lol i should have been a lawyer..

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I forgot much of my physics from school. But doesn't a stator require a rotor inside its magnetic field to induce force? In other words, a stator is a ring that produces a changing electromagnetic field, and when you put a rotor INSIDE the ring, the changing magnetic field created by the stator would induce a current in the rotor (faraday's law), and that current in turns create another electromagnetic field that opposes the electromagnetic field from the stator (lenz law). The two electromagnetic fields then generate a force to rotate the rotor, and the axle attached to it.

 

How to you get the electromagnetic field to go outside of the stator in the dry side into the rotor in the wet side across a piece of glass?

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I forgot much of my physics from school. But doesn't a stator require a rotor inside its magnetic field to induce force? In other words, a stator is a ring that produces a changing electromagnetic field, and when you put a rotor INSIDE the ring, the changing magnetic field created by the stator would induce a current in the rotor (faraday's law), and that current in turns create another electromagnetic field that opposes the electromagnetic field from the stator (lenz law). The two electromagnetic fields then generate a force to rotate the rotor, and the axle attached to it.

 

How to you get the electromagnetic field to go outside of the stator in the dry side into the rotor in the wet side across a piece of glass?

Great question, that's exactly why I'm not sure it will work.

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Firstly, I'm pretty sure if your not marketing and selling it you can't really get done for patent infringement, mainly because no one other than you and who ever you tell will know about.

 

Secondly, isn't this how the new vortech quiet drives work? That's why they're quiet, no more spinning motor on the dry side.

Also think oceans motions use a similar drive system in their flow directing closed loop systems.

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So, any ideas on where I might find a stator for this purpose?

You won't. You would have to design and build the stator for this design, which I will explain in a bit.

 

I forgot much of my physics from school. But doesn't a stator require a rotor inside its magnetic field to induce force? In other words, a stator is a ring that produces a changing electromagnetic field, and when you put a rotor INSIDE the ring, the changing magnetic field created by the stator would induce a current in the rotor (faraday's law), and that current in turns create another electromagnetic field that opposes the electromagnetic field from the stator (lenz law). The two electromagnetic fields then generate a force to rotate the rotor, and the axle attached to it.

 

How to you get the electromagnetic field to go outside of the stator in the dry side into the rotor in the wet side across a piece of glass?

You are thinking in terms of a radial flux motor, where the magnetic field is perpendicular to the axis of rotation. In this case (Halo_003, this is where you are running into problems) you would need an axial flux motor, where the magnetic field is parallel to the axis of rotation. This effectively lets you "project" the magnetic field away from the face of the stator to the rotor a given distance away. The big problem with this setup is that as the distance between the stator and the rotor increases, the relative power drops considerably. Fortunately, for a pump of this design, the torque required is quite low, so efficiency shouldn't suffer too badly (it's still going to suck compared to how the Vortech is set up).

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stand-back-theres-science-in-this-shit.j

 

:D :D :D

 

I think that this concept is pretty cool - and I can see things eventually going that way. But based on my little bit of google searching it seems that this tech is still a bit hard to come by where one-off DIY applications are concerned. Most of the examples I saw also had everything lined up pretty perfectly (like on the same shaft) - I wonder how exact you would have to get placement for it to work smoothly. Currently manufactured pumps - I'm guessing - use the same concept but in an indirect manner (normal radial motor with a magnetic "clutch"?

 

Cool graphic:

 

MotorAxialRadial.png

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Most of the examples I saw also had everything lined up pretty perfectly (like on the same shaft) - I wonder how exact you would have to get placement for it to work smoothly.

 

 

 

This is why so many people end up complaining of noisy vortech's. If they're not installed absolutely perfectly, they wear themselves out and go noisy.

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chipmunkofdoom2

Be careful here. If I recall correctly, one member on here duplicated the idea of a Vortech. Note, I didn't say the design or appearance, just the concept: wetside/dryside and running the thing on magnetism. If I recall correctly, this member posted some basic pictures of his work and was ordered to take them down. Again, I know this doesn't sound very helpful... the member's tank was a 1.5 SPS pico that had pretty long term success, and that's all I can recall. I think he essentially was told to cease and desist and to not talk about it.

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This was the first video I came to, loads of them on utube.

This is the same argument that kicked off with the jebao gyre rip off recently. All that's happened is someone has given a specific purpose to an existing design or concept and then spends lots of time (and money on lawyers) telling people they can't replicate it.

 

As we're talking conceptually here, the principle is possible, you could scale down a unit similar to the one in the video. I don't think anyone is going to get sued for this lol.

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