Will a small waterproof fountain pump work as a thruster?

Anything to do with Propulsion.
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rovebuilderguy
Posts: 5
Joined: Apr 28th, 2013, 8:30 pm

Will a small waterproof fountain pump work as a thruster?

Post by rovebuilderguy »

I'm kind of new to actually building ROVs (although I've been dreaming about it for years :-) ) Would something like the following fountain pump work as a thruster for a small ROV?

http://www.ebay.com/itm/2016-Submersibl ... Sw6btXTQGY

I thought about using it to pump water to push the ROV along (is that called jet propulsion?) instead of modifying it and attaching a propeller. Would something like this work? Has anybody tried it?

I have in mind a fairly small ROV, probably a foot long x 8 inches wide. Would two of the above pumps (one on each side) propel a small ROV like that?

I had in mind to use a raspberry pi and a L298N motor controller to control the three thrusters, with power supplied by PoE. Would a brushless DC motor like this work with the L298N just the same as it would with a brush motor?

I'm sure people have talked about this before, but I wasn't sure what to search for to find the posts about it.

Thanks for the help!
Ian MacKenzie
Posts: 160
Joined: Jan 3rd, 2014, 10:04 pm
Location: Vancouver B.C. Canada

Re: Will a small waterproof fountain pump work as a thruster

Post by Ian MacKenzie »

I doubt it'll be strong enough, but there's only one way to find out. They're cheap, so it won't be a big waste of cash if it doesn't work.
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bigbadbob
Posts: 272
Joined: Nov 28th, 2011, 10:24 am

Re: Will a small waterproof fountain pump work as a thruster

Post by bigbadbob »

I bought one of these hoping to use it as a vertical thruster on my mini rov.
It was crap. not enough flow, weak motor and it only runs one way.
There are some better submersible pumps out there, the 12v, 19W or bigger ones. I use three of them in my build.
I carefully cut off the pump end and made a prop adapter to go on the shaft.
Make sure you don't use brushless ones as they only run one way, the driver circuit is built in so you can't modify it.
I'd avoid the ones that have a pipe running up the side or though the middle as they're harder to cut the pump off and still keep them sealed.
Hope that helps.
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