Murata Micro Blower as Vacuum Pump

[wholder]

This is still in the crude, experimental stage, but I wanted to share in case anyone else was interested:

  https://sites.google.com/site/wayneholder/piezoelectric-vacuum-pump-for-pick-an-place-machine

Wayne

[Jason von Nieda]

Wow, thanks for posting. That is very interesting!

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[Karl Lew]

Wayne, that is damn elegant!

I will buy one and rig up a 3d case for my 15 gauge needle. Thank you!

[Karl Lew]

Ok. Mine is on order. 152 more in stock. 8)

[Karl Lew]

Wait. How on earth does that work?

The Murata is rated at 1.9 kPa static pressure, which is about 0.28 psi, which is about 1/8th of my vacuum cleaner or 1/20th a Sparkfun pump.

o_O. *baffled*

[Karl Lew]

Wayne, I think I have an explanation. Here are my calculations for a Murata MicroBlower running at 15V:

15 20 Needle gauge

1,500 1,500 Pascal

15.30 15.30 Grams/cm2

0.15 0.15 grams/mm2

1.37 0.60 Needle ID

1.48 0.29 Needle cross-sectional area mm2

0.23 0.04 Needle pull in grams

An ATMEGA328 32pin TQFP package weighs about 0.1 grams. I predict that your 20 gauge needle won't pick it up. However, a 15 gauge needle might barely pick it up--just hold your breath as you lift. The 0603 in your video is lighter, and that is why it sticks well (perhaps10g acceleration or better well). Since the force exerted on the part is directly related to the vacuum surface contact area of the tip, I imagine that the MicroBlower with a 15 gauge needle having an appropriate suction tip or larger head would in fact pick up a TQFP 32 pin package with some reliability. But it would be on the hairy edge of feasible. Let us know how it goes! It's a fascinating project.

8) Karl

[wholder]

Karl, thanks for taking the time to reply.  It's is an experiment, so it might not work out.  However, I have a few things to try before I abandon the idea.  The micro blowers should be fairly easy to cascade once I figure out a decent way to seal up the inlet side (working on some laser cut acrylic I can bolt together with a laser cut rubber gasket), so I'm going to also try two in series.  Of course, it still might not be enough suction to reliably hold parts, but I like screwing around with oddball ideas, so I'm gonna keep at it a bit longer.

Wayne 

[Karl Lew]

Wayne, sorry, I hadn't meant to be discouraging. In fact, this morning I thought that you might be able to craft a manual, battery powered SMT pickup tool for microcontrollers such as those used in Arduinos. I would have bought one, because when I looked there were no good, cheap alternatives. I couldn't use tweezers on the MCU chip. And when I looked at building a manual vacuum pickup, I ended up sliding down the slippery slope of "well, let's build the whole enchilada PnP machine."

A MicroBlower with two 9V batteries (like the Murata hovercraft video) and a 15 gauge spindle and a suction tip. Voila!  $49.99!  Sign me up!

On the gasket idea, Ponoko has laser-cut silicone. I was going to use that myself until I discovered the marvelous....o-ring. A 1.5" ID o-ring might be just the ticket for your MicroBlower sandwich.

Did you know o-rings were actually patented once? Amazing doohickeys...o_O

[Riley Gorder]

I realize this post have been inactive for a while...but I wanted to check in on your progress as I am considering using these blowers for a similar application.  Were you able to seal the inlet side successfully?  I have found that the blowers are very sensitive to a face seal as too much crush will adversely affect the blower performance.  Any success in having two in series?

-Riley

[Vinay Dand]

Hello,

I have tried two Murata Piezo blowers cascaded in Parallel. With two blower 16 pin SOIC can be lifted easily and holds on to nozzle during vibration due to movement. But 48 pin TQFP is held weakly. It moves / drop during nozzle movement.

Both blowers are mounted in a horizontal co planer surface, this ensures laminar flow without any pulsation.
I have not yet printed a box for this. Blowers are mounted in a ready made ABS rectangular box, and all joints are sealed using silicone compound. (Crude but OK for experimentation).
Inlets of both the blowers are left open inside box's cavity, while blower are mounted using nut / bolt on Top Lid. Outlet of the blower is kept open to outside air. A tubing from bottom of box suck air in the box, connecting this to a nozzle gives required vacuum for lifting components. Blower wires brought out from the side hole in the box and goes to external driver PCB.

I have ordered a third blower and will try three in parallel to get enough suction vacuum.
After that I will try to measure the vacuum and flow requirement with different nozzle diameters for different component weight of and post the results.

I may require to design a electronic driver circuit to drive 3 blowers in parallel.

-Vinay

[Riley Gorder]

Thanks for the update.  Do you have the blowers in parallel electrically or in terms of the flow path?  If you are trying to improve upon the static vacuum generated you are unlikely to get much improvement having the blowers in parallel in the flow path.  Have you tried them in series?  It's not a 2:1 improvement...  More like a 10-30% improvement.  At least with my preliminary testing. 

-Riley. 

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[chris]

This is not relaated to this vacuum pump.

Today i was in mall that have some 12V automotive compressor 18bar and 12v relative cheap.

Made in China.

I have disassembled it and it-s possivle to just reverse the membran, rotate on 180 degree in order that this pump

works as vacuum pump . After reassembling the running was not so smooth, i need to invest more time in understanding the assembly procedure, but at least this model can be converted without problems.

I make some pictures after i have more time. I'm in europe, so eventually i can ship it to someone if interested. 

[chris]

Just some images, i don't think its worth to open a new thread for this.

Cheers

Chris

 

[Neil Jansen]

I'm intrigued by the micro blowers.  One unit basically costs about the same as the ubiquitous Sparkfun vacuum pump ($15.98 vs $14.95 USD, respectively).  The flow rate and static pressure is considerably lower.  But, it's also considerably less noisy.  I don't like noisy pumps.  Makes me angry and irritated :)  If I had a full time need to make boards, obviously that's a different story.  The murata seems very practical for a desktop / small office type pick and place setup. 

I think I'm going to pull the trigger and order two or three to run in series or parallel.  I should be able to 3d print an enclosure for them to seal them up tight (might have to use ABS and an acetone bath to get it sealed).  The cool part is that I should always be able to switch the murata one out for a higher capacity one like the Sparkfun, if needed.  As long as they have a standard tube fitting and some common electrical interface to start and stop the suction, it seems kinda win-win.

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[Jason von Nieda]

If you put the SparkFun pump in a small box with some foam insulation it's very quiet. Completely desktop friendly.

Jason

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[Neil Jansen]

OK, noted.  Good to know that the noise can be managed.

I'm still raising an eyebrow though at the murata unit, its dimensions are 20mm x 20mm, which happens to be the same size as my Nema 8 hollow shaft stepper motor that I'm using for the part rotation. 

If they were light enough, I could basically mount them right at the head, and forgo the cabling completely. 

The datasheet didn't list a weight, but Digikey lists them as 1.36 grams each.  My NEMA 8 stepper motor is around 50 grams, so two microblowers wouldn't add that much at all (and in fact might even weigh less than the silicone tubing and metal fitting that would attach to it).

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[Vinay Dand]

Hello,

Blower are parallel electrically as well as for flow path. My experiments shows, you do not need more flow as nozzle touches the component practically. More static vacuum is preferable to hold the component in place during nozzle movement. I have tried series in flow path (still driven electrically parallel - to reduce pulsations) as well as parallel in flow path (also driven electrically parallel). Seems parallel in flow gives more static vacuum than series one, It may be due to error in mechanical mounting for my set up. I will try to arrange a vacuum gauge and post the results rather then giving my crude experimental results.

Any suggestions will be appreciated, as I will be repeating with new construct with awaited third blower, to try three of them simultaneously.

- Vinay

[bryce metinou]

hi,
I would order my microblower by a microprocessor. I have two amplifier. lmh6881 and L6225. someone could guide me thank you

[Nicolas Rudolfsen]

If you connect two microblowers mechanical in series you will get double the amount of static pressure, but no increase in air flow. You must however have a two drivers, since they are self oscillating circuits, and the microblowers don't have the exact same resonance frequency and they only preforms at a 100% if they resonate at the right frequency. I have made a setup where i can generate +/-9 kPa by having three microblowers in series for pressure and three in series for vacuum. 

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[Maddog]

Any update on using the Murata Micro Blower?

[Maddog]

Is this micro blower as vacuum pump dead?

[william hare]

@Maddog 

My questions too.

Not sure if anyone else found or posted this... But I found a GREAT deal on the Murata blowers.

$8.83 ea Must buy min of 6pcs.

This is JUST the blower, not the signal generator too. But i think you may be able to run them in parallel. If you look very closely to the video of the stack of blowers pushing the syringe, it looks like only 2 wires running the show.

Anyway, here is the link.

https://www.verical.com/pd/murata-manufacturing-blowers-and-fans-mzb1001t02-567489

[Rich Obermeyer]

@william,  Since I didn't see a response I gave up on the micro blower vacuum pump concept altogether.  Its way to noisey for me and the Delta makes enough noise on its own for me.

I noticed on Neil's demo on youtube that it didn't pick up a heat sink well at all.

So some rubber seal will be required.  It would be great to use something standard out there already.

I am looking at using something more like one of those manual SMT part pickers.

The bulb would be mounted in a tube with opening in the side for mechanical fingers.

You press the bulb and then touch the top of the part and release the bulb and it will hold the part.

With different rubber tips it can pick up about anything the delta can handle.

My current design uses a stepper to squeeze the bulb and then reverse the process to release.

It works on the bench but now I got to morph it into my delta and calibrate it.

No noise at all!

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[william hare]

@maddog

Interesting...

How about this idea... A peristaltic pump for pick up vacuum?!?

Run it off a stepper NEMA17.

It would work like this:
Head going down to pick part.
When Z_height is reached, stepper runs CCW.
Head moves to placement. (Stepper still running)
Head goes down to place part. (Stepper still running)
When Z_height is reached, stepper runs CW.

Thus providing a "blowing" action to release part.

Great....now I have more projects on my plate -__-

LMAO!

[william hare]

Kinda like this....

[Rich Obermeyer]

Are you going to insert a flex hose in this so you have a similar connection like a fish tank pump?

What kind of PSI can you get with this?

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[william hare]

I would use some tubing that I have left over from the ink draw pump on my banner printer. It uses a peristaltic pump type pump to pull ink from the cartridge through the head. To prime it  and to keep the ink new when not in use. So it runs all the time. Its some good tubing.

As for the PSI, I don't really know. I think it would depend on lots of factors. Size of the tube, number of rollers, how fast it rotates. There are some pumps on thingiverse.com. So i might DL one and play with it. 

Need to finish the feeder first! :P

[william hare]

forgot, I would use small barb fitting to connect the tubing.

I dont have fish, but I would guess thats what they ues.

[Rich Obermeyer]

What kind of tubing is it if I want to buy some?

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[william hare]

Like this one.....

http://www.ebay.com/itm/Tubing-for-Pump-Soft-6X4mm-for-Solvent-inkjet-Printers-US-Seller-/291156622061?hash=item43ca497aed:m:mzhETFK3n9Y9jlaPb7yqbcg

There a few different sizes for different brands of printers. Make sure you DO NOT get ridged tubing. You need soft.

[Richard Hornbaker]

@William - any particular reason you'd use a stepper to drive this pump (and a NEMA17, at that)? I'd think PWM on a cheap DC motor would be small, cheap, compact, quiet.

[Rich Obermeyer]

I was thinking same thing.  

How would you instruct openpnp to step a motor CCW and then CW.

Turning an output on and then off after its placed is very simple in openpnp.

On Tue, Nov 3, 2015 at 10:25 AM, Richard Hornbaker <ric...@hornbaker.com> wrote:

@William - any particular reason you'd use a stepper to drive this pump (and a NEMA17, at that)?  I'd think PWM on a cheap DC motor would be small, cheap, compact, quiet.

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[william hare]

The pump could be powered by its own electronics. Just in case OpenPNP cannot support the CCW - CW action for the vac on and off.

Would only take some simple code on the microcontroller. When the OpenPNP output for the vac is HIGH (vac on) the input on the addon microcontroller board spins the stepper CCW. When the openPNP output for the vac is LOW (vac off) the microcontroller tells the stepper to stop, then reverse for X degrees, then stop again. Then the microcontroller waits for a new HIGH from OpenPNP to start all over again.

easy peasy....lol Only take a hand full of parts to make one. I would use a PIC micro. I do not use Arduino.....

I would use a stepper to dial in the correct vac and blow. It should not be to noisy.

[Richard Hornbaker]

@MadDog - regarding microblowers noise... All the videos I've seen are silent, though I know they're driven by piezos. Are they noisy?

Also, I recall Neil's test only used 1 blower, where the more robust examples use up to 4 in a stack. Although I'd strive for a lightweight effector, I like the idea of the vacuum source being on the head to make it as responsive as possible.

@William - Thanks for the cheap source! I recall reading that each blower may have a slightly different resonant frequency, so a single driver shouldn't be shared across multiple blowers. Of course, there's ideal, and then there's practical.

[Rich Obermeyer]

@Richard,  I don't recall seeing Neil's test.  I didn't see anything where it was except-able or even close.  It was either too noisy or not enough vacuum hold.

 I don't know if the microblowers are noisy.  I never invested in that solution because nobody had good news.   I was just hoping for progress and had not been seeing any.

The current huge 12 Volt vacuum is just way to loud for my intended use. I think Williams solution has promise.  Just trying to figure out how to connect it up without to much hardware.  I already ordered the tubing and will be printing a pump this week to try out and get some vacuum measurements.

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[Michael Anton]

I've been thinking about enclosing the noisy vacuum pump in a chamber that is at negative pressure (i.e. a vacuum bottle, generated by the pump of course), which should cut the noise down to a minimum, other than conducted noise.  I haven't tried it yet, and I wonder if this might cause it to overheat, due to the lack of cooling.

Mike

[Rich Obermeyer]

The final thing about that noisy vacuum pump is its life cycle of only 500 hrs.

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