MAE 2250, 2019
Peristaltic Water Pump
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For MAE 2250, groups of students were tasked with designing and manufacturing a water pump to compete with other classmates to see which designs would have the highest flowrate. The design needed to be made within a budget, required constraints like shaft size and mounting, manufactured only using available resources like manual machining, and had to output 1 liter of water.
Our team chose to make a peristaltic water pump, primarily due to the engineering tolerances that would need to be met with manually machining other designs like a piston water pump. From there, we generated multiple design concepts and conducted flowrate calculations.
Our final design prioritized simple machined/COTS components and a consolidated BOM in order to complete parts within the allocated machine shop time. The tube guide is a great example of a simple, low-cost component - it was a PVC pipe sawed in half that dictated the overall dimensions of the pump. It also featured a unique adjustable rotor, so the amount of compression on the tubing could be tuned.
After all the components were fabricated, it was assembled and functioned successfully. It produced the highest flowrate out of all the peristaltic pump in our class.