Help with Water Pump

[()blivion]

Good to see you back Joe. IDK what the admins would prefer. But a new thread could be preferred over renewing this. Then again, they prolly don't care.

 

[alec_t]

Hi Joe. We're still here . Hope you enjoyed your break.

 

[salty joe]

Thanks for the welcome back ()blivion and Alec. It's great to be back and great to hear from you guys.

Somehow I got a whole row of green dots by my name. I certainly have not earned them-not complaining or anything-but for me to have the same green dots as you electronic heavyweights does not seem right. Maybe this is my lucky day.

 

[4pyros]

Thanks for the welcome back ()blivion and Alec. It's great to be back and great to hear from you guys.

Somehow I got a whole row of green dots by my name. I certainly have not earned them-not complaining or anything-but for me to have the same green dots as you electronic heavyweights does not seem right. Maybe this is my lucky day.

Just means you have been good.
Welcome back.
Andy

 

[salty joe]

Thanks Andy.

 

[KeepItSimpleStupid]

Glad you enjoyed your vacation. Now where were we?

1. I'd like to suggest that you get some T42 terminals https://www.newark.com/jsp/search/productdetail.jsp?id=38F1363&Ntt=38f1363 and an insertion tool https://www.newark.com/vector-elect...bber-handle-m5058d3/dp/96F7014?Ntt=vector+t42 if it won't break the bank.

These little gems keep the components separated from the bread-boarded traces. They need a board with 0.042 holes. These, I thought I had, but could not find them.

2) I have the opinion that you should try to run the pumps at 18 V or below. I have not been able to contact Melexis. Phone calls and emails have been unsuccessful.

3) You have a controller which basically works in terms of pump sequencing, so I think you should work on separating the driver circuitry and the power circuitry maybe to the point of being able to use connectors. The barrier plug gable headers for power and crimp style for the logic power. If it makes sense, I can try to offer some suggestions.

4) Is there any harm in changing to 5V logic? The OEM controller has 5V out of the box. 12 V can probably be had by replacing the 5 V regulator.

5) Do we (I) want to work on a modification to the OEM controller which would allow temporarily.
a) Just an adjustable power supply (PS)
b) or a 17-~23 V adjustable PS and a a lower voltage. Joe knows what 10 V will do and he knows what 6V will do. Any guess on a lower limit for feeding.
I think 18V has the highest reliability level.

6) We are back to the same sort of issue. A daughter board on the OEM controller or something different?

I'd like to suggest that for an initial test, take one pump at 24 V and another at 18V and connect to a stupid timer and one of the driver's. Find a timer that will cycle every 15 minutes to an hour and just run continuously.

7) If this works, plan on learning a free PCB program such as Eagle or Design Spark, canabalizing the OEM controller for the regulators, inductors, and other assorted parts and design a PCB. Because this isn't qty=1 it's probably a more optimum approach.

8) I'd like you to go the sanaptrak route: https://www.newark.com/vector-elect...bber-handle-m5058d3/dp/96F7014?Ntt=vector+t42 whch means the board dimensions must be 72.2 mm on one side. That's $15 for ~1219mm. Then there is ~$11 for $36" of T-32 DIN rail (ebay is a source as well). Aluminum, slotted and steel are usual types available. I didn't see the mounting clips (2 per board) at allied, but they are here: https://www.newark.com/te-connectivity/tkad/mounting-clip/dp/50F2979?Ntt=TKAD

9) A cabinet on the wall with a raised bottom panel is one way of mounting stuff like this. I also used to get LMB Heeger products from here as a special order. I used to use the UNIPAK, I think, 19" rack cases which were very economical. They could be mounted on the wall like I did a UPS system which worked well. So, you could use the "front panel" attached upside down and facing up for any indicators. And use the rear panel for any pump connections, etc. This could be easily removed from the wall and serviced if necessary. 2 RU (Rack units) is 3.5" high, s an RU is 1-3/4". Rack cases everywhere I looked were expensive. These were the cheapest that I ever found.

The front and rear panels are bent and provide the attachment holes via threaded inserts. The tops are bent aluminum too with 6 or 8 threaded inserts on the side. You could get handles, plain or mounting ears. I used to get mounting ears and I would usually add handles from another supplier that mounted on the front. Each part is available separately. A really cool case. The front panel isn't too thick. I also used to purchase rack slides from another manufacturer. In one instance, I put two round stainless bars for the back. Then I tied a bunch of exiting wires to these bails. The actually connectors were DIN rail mounted inside of the case.

I digress..

One of the cool parts was that I could bring an instrument connector to a distribution point (connector) use this like a telco wiring closet. Then, there would be exiting connectors to the digital, analog inputs and analog outputs that left from this central point.

It's very typical that when building a control panel for industry is to use lots of DIN terminal blocks. They would exist at the wire entry points. From the entry point, a short cable would go to their respective internal point whether it be a digital I/O module, Analog input or output from a PLC. It was all based on the way telco systems are arranged with entry, distribution and cross-connects.

In this case, I don't think the DIN RAIL SNAPTRAK method is too expensive. Case, power supply and real-estate always kill you in the end anyway. For now, DIN rail and a piece of wood could work.

Tear it apart, guys,

Thanks.

 

[salty joe]

Glad you enjoyed your vacation. Now where were we?

2) I have the opinion that you should try to run the pumps at 18 V or below. I have not been able to contact Melexis. Phone calls and emails have been unsuccessful.
I think 18V has the highest reliability level.

6) We are back to the same sort of issue. A daughter board on the OEM controller or something different?

I'd like to suggest that for an initial test, take one pump at 24 V and another at 18V and connect to a stupid timer and one of the driver's. Find a timer that will cycle every 15 minutes to an hour and just run continuously. Anything I should watch for other than an overheated PS?

Thanks KISS. That is quite the write up. I am open to using part of the OEM controller-whatever might work. The snaptrack is very cool but if possible I'd prefer to solder as I have been doing because I already have all the stuff to solder. I hate to buy a tool that I only use one time.

IIRC, one of my PS is adjustable from about 20V to 24V and the other is 24V to more than 24V. So 20V is my minimum. I do have a timer that can turn off and on every 15 min. for that test.

I went back to the schematic from post 367 and I guess it looks so good to me because it has a dedicated mosfet for each pump, like the schematic from post 36 that ran four pumps all day without even getting warm. The meltdown version used one mosfet for a pair of pumps. But until the meltdown, it worked perfectly. Which makes me wonder if the dedicated mosfet tweak will do the trick.

I’ll definitely defer to you guys-I know this was kicked around already, and if the end result was not likely crash and burn you’d say go. Not trying to say I know what’s going on in the world of electronics or anything. It just seemed so close after the meltdown. So let me ask you this-If I built from post 367 and after running four 40W light bulbs all day with the PS set at 20V, I replaced one light bulb with a pump and babysat it for ½ hour or so making sure nothing got hot and if all went well, checked back every 5 minutes for a while then every 10 minutes and so on, do you think I might have a fighting chance for success?

 

[KeepItSimpleStupid]

The snaptrack is very cool but if possible I'd prefer to solder as I have been doing because I already have all the stuff to solder. I hate to buy a tool that I only use one time.

Snaptrak is not a tool. It's a way of mounting a PC board and other things without using standoffs. The PCB snaps into a piece of plastic and two clips hold it to the DIN Rail. DIN rail is a 32 mm wide and a few mm high piece of metal that all sort of things can snap too. The only restriction is the width of the PCB.

Take a look here: There is a pic of a DIN rail and some clips; https://www.winford.com/products/cat_din.php These guys use the clips to directly mount their PC boards, e.g a relay driver https://www.winford.com/products/cat_rly.php to the DIN rail.

Snaptrak just encloses the PCB on the bottom and side edges with a piece of plastic. I have ordered stuff from Winford and they also took my suggestion and redesigned their relay boards.

It's kinda like you can fasten a 3 foot length of DIN rail to a flat surface and then move, reposition etc the various modules.

Attached is an example of a DIN rail system that I started to put together for a home project. This is basically a long piece of DIN Rail, 2 PC boards with relays. A PC board with a wire to a connector, an RF receiver module. An alarm/alarm silence PCB, 3 DIN Rail mounted breakers and some DIN rail mounted outlets. An X-10 interface, an Insteon and UPB interface.

The plan is to separate it into smaller sections, rather than one long section. It does have one bad design flaw. The relays will effectively be connected directly to the house infrastructure and to the outputs of the RF module.
If the relays have to be replaced, then the wires would have to be removed from the terminal blocks and from the RF module. A total of 13 wires. I didn't design the relay modules. I would use screw terminals that plug into a header.

Do you get the idea now?

 

[KeepItSimpleStupid]

The T42 terminals and insertion tool just makes it easier to replace resistors if they die in the future, The connections are made to the bottom of the terminal and the resistor connections are made to the top. As usual, the tool is expensive. If you have the means to make a shallow slot in a piece of 3/8" aluminum rod, that's all the tool is. It's probably something like 1/8 x 3/16 x 1/8" deep. Guessing the dimensions. So, the <$15 is connections for 50 resistors. I've used a pair of pliers and even a wooden dowel to insert these, but it requires straightening the pins. If I order some of the terminals, I'll send you a few to try out.

You still have to solder. The component to the top and the "trace/wire" to the bottom. The pic of my analog computer used this method.

The other point is a connector for logic type interconnects. There are all sorts of connectors similar to these https://www.mouser.com/ProductDetai...EwmkoUtv7T6QCnXnOg%2bxDKhvO2ADgogDtfLXnTKbKQ=

that connect to basically a 0.025" post or something similar. They can be polarized, locking or just free hanging. The connectors are cheap. The pins are cheap. The crimping tool is another story. I sent you a sample. Occasionally, you can use needle nose pliers and solder the terminals.

Larger body connectors are usually available in a solder and crimp style.

 

[KeepItSimpleStupid]

Alec got a design together in post #812. https://www.electro-tech-online.com/threads/help-with-water-pump.124250/#post1068957 which supposedly geared to detect a locked-rotor condition.

It is a one driver per pump any you do need six in the end.

It does not incorporate speed control or feed control for that matter. I showed you how to get ~10V from the OEM board. We can change that so that you can get say 15-24 V or therabouts from the OEM board and say 6-15 V for feed mode if that makes sense.

Troubles are is that the LOGIC supply on the OEM board is 5V and not 12 V, but that isn't a real big deal. The other issue is that two digital inputs are necessary to change the speed and do we do that now or later. e.g. a 00 would be slow speed and a 10 would be high speed.

Possibly, we could turn that into a 10 for high and a 01 for low and a 00 for super low or maybe shutdown for that matter.

I'm kinda thinking of just two motor modules and two modified OEM boards that have the ability to adjust from 10-24 V with a timer moving between the two motors or the original module, but you may really need 4 motors to test to find out if 18 V will work for you. That's the voltage I'd like for you to shoot for until I can get a confirmation from Melexis which right now looks impossible.

The 40 W 120 V lamps are no where near 40 W at 24v and a lamps resistance isn't even linear.

 

[salty joe]

Can the design in post 812 run two pairs of pumps for tide simulation?

Thanks for the picture of snaptrack, KISS.

 

[()blivion]

One of the circuits from post 812 per pump only, if that's the information your looking for. It could be made to do two at once with very little modifications though... But as is, one only.

The design in post 812 is one "pump module". It's simply a smart buffer circuit designed to allow our logic circuit to be able to fully control a pump safely. It also allows us to isolate parts of the system, and to build and test them one at a time. It would ultimately be combined with a "controller" that would handle things like "flick" and timings and so on. Refer to this diagram I made a while back, re-pasted here for your convenience. They are the things labeled "Pump Driver [X]" and are the blocks second to the right in the picture.

View attachment 65827

(Note: I have no idea if we are still running with this design overview or not.)

 

[KeepItSimpleStupid]

It's one driver per motor. To run two motors, the control input is tied together to the output #1 of of the controller and then the same for output #2. That's why you need 6 of these and that's why I'm advocating PCB construction once the design is proven.

So, after a good night's sleep, tell me what you think of Snaptrak. But if your talking about my picture of the long gismo, that is things mounted on DIN rail and no Snaptrak devices are used. You really don;t need the Snaptrak itself, if you can use the clips from WINFORD, but you still have to keep the width reasonable.

In a typical control panel (I wish I could find a pic of one of mine) you place ROWS of DIN RAIL and between the DIN RAIL you place Wiring Duct such as this: https://www.asi-ez.com/member/x1654-Wire-Duct.asp so now you have this big Electronics erector set

This pic https://www.alarmsaf.com/ps12408.html , although it doesn't look like DIN rail to me, it very much could be. Those last two rows of stuff could be mounted on DIN RAIL. I just don't think it is.

In general, though the cabinets are purchased with an Aluminum back plate, typically 1/8" thick. Anything mounted to the plate gets mounted via drilled and tapped holes.

The rails and the ducts add lots of flexibility within the cabinet.

In some cases, the enclosure contains a few relays and fuseholders and a barrier strip. If the case is big enough, the use of just the DIN terminals (labeled) would really make it look much neater. Suppose that as an example, there were two fuses for 240 V and a main power relay and a few interlocks, such as pressure, access panels and a few spares. There might be a N, L1, L2 and G terminals coming in and fused L1 and L2 terminals leaving. Then there would be a nice row of say dual terminals for each interlock. There would also be bussed L1, L2 and N bars available. It would look nice an be easy to troubleshoot.

This **broken link removed** sort of thing, although I don;t like that one is basically two rows of two terminals. They but up against each other and the last one ends with an end plate. There are "separator" plates that can be added too. So if the block contained 2 + sep +2 + sep + 2 + end it could be a way to connect 3 things that are part of the interlock. There is all sorts of stuff available and all of it's expensive and usually with high minimums.

The point is, you might consider terminals is distributing the 24 VDC from the power supply to 4 or 6 motor controllers. The DIN rail for each motor controller and the "wave controller", the "alarm management module", the "Power module (OEM controller)" and the "Tide controller". The restriction is the width if you use snaptrack. If you don't and use the OEM controller, then that width fixes the maximum width.
You don't have to make a plate full of swiss cheese holes to mount each circuit board. If something changes and you need a little more room, you just nudge the module a bit.

Actually, I want to see the OEM controller gone, but part of a PCB making up the motor control module. Then I'd like to see pluggable screw terminals for the power connections and header for the logic inputs and outputs.

The ideas could change. I built two entire electronic instruments using Snaptrak and DIN rail and I was really happy how it turned out. I also built a "system" with multiple cabinets using DIN rail and I was really happy how that turned out.

I was not happy when the head honco, who knows nothing about electronics said "do it this way". He had building sensors like a velocity alarm, hydrogen alarm, hydride alarm, pull stations, solenoid power going to a cylinder in a gas cabinet just being connected to a terminal strio on the back of a rack mounted enclosure.

Troubleshooting was IMPOSSIBLE. The NEXT iteration fixed some of the problems. A 37 pin connector was used to interface the rack to the wall cabinet. All wires entered through a conduit from the top into the wall cabinet. I don't remember if I used DIN terminals and cross connects or just a DIN terminal per pin. 120 VAC power was run to the box which wasn't allowed in the first generation and the 24 VDC supply for the velocity detector was placed there too.

So now, at least, you could disconnect the box and have a long cable hanging. Remove it from the rack and re-plug it in again and now were able to troubleshoot. The box should have had rack slides. I wanted the functionality on the wall.

Also, in order to save money all of the interlocks were sequential and were not latched. So, now the system blips off every now and then. Is it a pressure burst, a power glitch, the air velocity detector or a loose wire? Who knows? The velocity detector requires periodic cleaning because of dust. The fan belts need to be changed on the blower periodically. He did save some $ and I refused to work on it for the most part.

 

[salty joe]

Belated thanks Alec for the circuit from post 812. https://www.electro-tech-online.com/threads/help-with-water-pump.124250/. Does it replace the right side of the circuit from post 367 https://www.electro-tech-online.com/threads/help-with-water-pump.124250/?
Thanks ()blivion for that helpful diagram.

 

[KeepItSimpleStupid]

The output of U3c goes to (2) motor controllers and the output of U3d goes to (2) more motor controllers. Everything past that point in #367 is gone.

Ob()'s diagram is probably not quite right. The DC-DC converter that lowers the 24 VDC would be per motor. e.g. A modified OEM controller.

 

[salty joe]

So the best way to run two pairs of pumps is connect a pigtail to U3c and another pigtail to U3d, then hook up 4 motor controllers. Gotcha and thanks.

Is there a test to check the left side of the circuit from post 367? (Up to and including U3c and U3d)
Is there a test to check the circuit from post 812?
Out of curiosity, would both 367 and 812 be considered motor controllers?
Thanks, thanks thanks.

 

[KeepItSimpleStupid]

Post #812: https://www.electro-tech-online.com/threads/help-with-water-pump.124250/#post1068957
Post #367: https://www.electro-tech-online.com/threads/help-with-water-pump.124250/#post1060587

So the best way to run two pairs of pumps is connect a pigtail to U3c and another pigtail to U3d, then hook up 4 motor controllers. Gotcha and thanks.

Remember to include logic power and logic ground.

Is there a test to check the left side of the circuit from post 367? (Up to and including U3c and U3d)

A voltmeter from there to ground. You probably don't have enough current there to drive an LED, but that could be arranged.

What chip is U3?

A ULN2004 is one of my favorite chip solutions. https://www.electro-tech-online.com/custompdfs/2012/07/22737.pdf The ULN2003 would be appropriate for a 5V supply. Use a LED with a series resistor < (12-1.2)/20e-3 ohms. The chip needs ground, but no power. The + of the LED would go to +12 then a resistor to the (-) side of the LED and finally connected to an output.

Other options are transistor + resistors or a FET and resistors.

It wouldn't hurt to have a spare as a "LOGIC probe".

Is there a test to check the circuit from post 812?

Apply +12 to the Control Input will turn on the motor.

Out of curiosity, would both 367 and 812 be considered motor controllers?

I'd call #367 (left half) a Motor controller and the (right half) a Motor driver. Together, I'd call it a wave controller
I'd call post #812 a Motor Driver

Thanks, thanks thanks.

Remember the need to keep power and logic ground separate and connect at one point.

 

[salty joe]

In post 812, R9 is 2meg2. When I googled 2meg2 all I got was a giant capacitor. Is there another name for a 2meg2 resistor?

 

[KeepItSimpleStupid]

Alec pulled a fast one on you.

The resistors such as 2k2 is a 2.2 K resistor, similarly 2meg2 is a 2.2 Megohm resistor.

1/4 W resistors should be fine except for the one that's 2W.

If you need to compute the wattage for the LED resistor, it would be > (0.020*R) approximately. The 0.020 could change slightly based on the resistor value chosen.

 

[alec_t]

Sorry about the 2meg2 confusion. I prefer that to the 2.2meg notation because (a) decimal dots easily get lost/overlooked and (b) LTSpice happily accepts it.
Meanwhile, back at the office......
As stated above, the post #812 circuit (PDM) drives one pump. I suggest, Joe, you build one such module and soak-test it (no pun intended) running a single pump to check its performance, using a supply voltage as low as you can get from your unit (20V?).
If the test is ok then you could build three more PDM modules and consider controlling them with a "Tidal Timer, Alarm and Speed Module" (TASM) which might look like this :-
View attachment 65865
The Timer section of this TASM corresponds to the left part of the circuit in post #367.
The Speed section is a beefed-up 20V 5A voltage supply which should be sufficient to power a pair of pumps at a time and is switchable to ~10V for 'feed-mode'.