Fluid
Sculpture
This Project started more than a year
ago with
inspiration from Casual Profanity, Casual Profanity picked up on
the Make Magazine Blog. I was very impressed with what I saw, and is
this tied
in with my general fascination with fluids, I thought it worthwhile to
investigate the concept myself.
Information on how to achieve the
effect was fairly
scant, so I ended up heading off in my own direction, finding there
were a
number of key elements.
Pump- The pump is an industrial flojet
part- similar to
that used in caravan and boat freshwater systems, found as a new old
stock part
on ebay. It needs to be a diaphragm pump to cope with pumping both air
and
water and be self priming.
Valve- The valve is an industrial part,
found in the
scrapyard, which although it was intended for air, seems to work fine
with
water once the exhaust breather is ducted back to the tank. It is a
unit that
switches between two inputs to one output.
Tank- A simple part- a used screenwash
container. The
fluid used being water with food colour in it.
Tube- My hope was to make something
big, which was going
to require a lot of tubing. I got lucky eventually, obtaining 90m of
PVC tubing
through ebay for less than £10.
Electronics- This unit was put together by my friend Paul.
The Complete System
The system works by using the pump to
draw the fluid
through the tube before returning it to the reservoir. The pump speed
can be
varied by a PWM control on the electronics board. Initial trials were
with the
pump at the input to the tube, but control was difficult, I believe
because the
large volume of the diaphragm chamber was limiting the resolution. The
valve
switches between the fluid pickup from the reservoir and drawing air
into the
tubing, and is also switched by the control board.
Progress to a working application was
slow due to moving
house, other projects and sourcing appropriate parts, but a mostly
completed
and functional unit was ready for this year’s UK Maker Faire. The
response we
got was great, much better than expected with many people standing and
watching
for quite long lengths of time, and with plenty of engagement for new
directions and ideas. Interestingly for me as an Engineer- it’s the
first time
I have been called an Artist!
Some of these ideas we will progress
further, but
initially we need to focus on getting the electronic circuitry laid out
on a
reproducible PCB, and optimising the pump and valve interaction to
enable a
better bubble resolution. Primary in this will be a smaller pump.
Possible
future options:
(c) M.Pantrey 2010-2013