Microreview: dual outlet aquarium air pump

It took me a while to notice the little magic button on the back! Switching it got me twice the throughput ... and twice the noise, but it is still OK. I checked it by myself and emptied a 1.5L bottle in about 50 seconds with one outlet.

This is the pump I used to cool the deposited materiels in my old, other blog post http://www.tridimake.com/2016/05/3d-printing-cooling-with-air-pump-aquarium.html




This is certainly not the claimed 4L/min but it is still  decent compared to my previous "real brand" one, see below. And the pressure seems even higher so it may be better for focused air cooling. As for me, I will probably use it not only to cool my 3D printed part with a latex tube as I do already, but also to try and cool down the hot end heatsink without requiring any more bulky, noisy and failure-prone little fan.

Note, that I already owned a costly Whisper AP150, which is a solid and extremely quiet pump, even though only 110VAC (I hacked it with a simple diode to power it with half waves of 220VAC, it does not seem to get too hot...). I wanted more air and more outlets, once I saw it was worth the try.

How does an air pump work?

This is deceptively simple!

Inside of an aquarium air pump (Whisper AP150).
This is only an electromagnet which relies on the alternative
mains current, to pull and push levers on soft rubber pouches!
So you get two levers moving by a few millimeters at 50 or 60 cycles per seconds.

Dual outlet 1.5L/min (verified) air pump. Works well!

Home made air pump

Some made aie pumps by themselves, by relying on a regular motor. These are probably noisier and less efficient or durable, but they can be made to work very well, e.g.:

Home made air pump with a regular motor, very nice build.