My Octopus OTP3000 DIY needlewheel

[ahoyhoy239]

Originally posted by luke33
Ok guys, I know everyone is pumped about this impeller and its all good stuff and i've been following this thread since the get go but here's the facts. Spongebobby is getting 32scfh out of his pump with an enlarged venturi and a boared out elbo or output. So why is everyone so excited about this? You can toss your venturi, drill a 1/4" hole in your threaded volute cover close to the impeller, drop in a 1/4" hose adapter, take off the top later of nw, add 3-4layers of enkemat, boar out the elbo and get 40scfh every time. The thing is the impeller is only going to get you up to 20-30scfh max. Sure it will be much better than the 13scfh you get stock, but i'm saying you don't have to go through all this. Not trying to be a jerk, just stating the facts as the skimmer can't handle more than 35-40scfh anyhow.

Luke

because i have a lightly stocked 92g, i dont need to mod this skimmer anyways so changing the impeller is the easiest way to mess with it, just because i would lke to see what it can do if it did pull more air. with this if i do screw anything up, its just one impeller, not the whole pump.

why cant spongebobby try something new? if nobody was allowed to do what he is doing, this hobby nor any other would be going anywhere

[luke33]

I'm all for new mods, but if you expect just adding the impeller in there your still not going to get much improvement from stock, i'd say 5scfh more max. The venturi and elbo are the biggest problems with the octo's.

[spongebobby]

Wanna bet :-)

I disagree luke33. I'm sure that if you put my needlewheel on a completely stock OTP3000 it's going to pull more than 5scfh over stock.I was getting well over these numbers with the first batch I made. Although I do agree that 35-40 is about the max the 8" octopus skimmers can handle.

Mine jumps between 30-32 and is very touchy as far as water level inside the skimmer. Only about an 1/8th of a turn takes it from an excellent foam head to skimming very wet

Some people just are tired of messing with mesh-mod (myself included). I believe it ruins the pump prematurely and is hit and miss as far as getting it right. No 2 people's mesh-mod is the same so what one person gets is not the same as the next.

Luke33 do you own or have you owned a Octopus skimmer?

[JCTewks]

I agree with luke on that one...the venturi's are not good on these skimmers and all of the plumbing is just too small to make good use of these pumps. Unfortunately though, if you enlarge the plumbing and elbows, and mod the venturi you can't go back to stock without purchasing a new venturi and elbow (not sure why you would want to go back though )

the enkamat impeller mod is great mainly because of the small size of the bubbles it makes...there is a small increase in air draw, but IMO the smaller bubbles is the biggest plus with a mesh mod.

If Spongebobby's impeller can create bubbles as small or smaller than a meshwheel I think it would be a good alternative for those not wishing to destroy their impeller. But I still think that with a few more mods to spongebobby's volute and skimmer that He is testing on it would draw more air.

[1badbrd]

well is it all about the amount of air one draws in or how small the bubbles can be created. Maybe a combo, but if the skimmers max out at a certain air flow #, then couldnt performace also be increased when we can create as many micor bubbles, as possible. More bubbles more surface area. Isnt that one thing we want?

Okay i typed a little to quickly, i just read the statement JCTewks
made and i just repeated what he said. Sorry

[medic29]

There is truth to several of the above comments. The original stock plumbing is too small. The venturi is not a true venturi to begin with and with some mods can end up lowering the wattage drawn by the motor and still have an increased amount of air draw. The statement in reference to mesh mods not being the same is very, very true!!! I have not been able to get two the same when I modded them both. Getting the right smount of mesh, whether it is too tight or not tight enough, whether you use fishing line or zip ties, and the list goes on. Not to mention whether or not it is balanced or not which goes to whether or not it has trouble starting back up and/or rattles when starting.

If we can get the same or similar results as a good mesh mod with this new impeller design and have them all identical, let's go for it.

The other mods to the skimmer plumbing and such can be done as well, but this thread is only about the impeller design. Let's keep it on topic.

[luke33]

Originally posted by spongebobby
Wanna bet :-)

I disagree luke33. I'm sure that if you put my needlewheel on a completely stock OTP3000 it's going to pull more than 5scfh over stock.I was getting well over these numbers with the first batch I made. Although I do agree that 35-40 is about the max the 8" octopus skimmers can handle.

Mine jumps between 30-32 and is very touchy as far as water level inside the skimmer. Only about an 1/8th of a turn takes it from an excellent foam head to skimming very wet

Some people just are tired of messing with mesh-mod (myself included). I believe it ruins the pump prematurely and is hit and miss as far as getting it right. No 2 people's mesh-mod is the same so what one person gets is not the same as the next.

Luke33 do you own or have you owned a Octopus skimmer?

I'm not trying to bash what your doing, just sayin, its much easier to do the other ways than to machine your impeller. But if thats how you want to do it, i'll be watching ot see how it does. If you can make it work better than the meshmod i'm all ears. And yes i've owned the 200, 150, modded many of them, recirc'd....etc. Along with many many other skimmers

[GuySmilie]

Originally posted by spongebobby
Give him this code and see if it will run this

G0X5.0Y5.0Z0.0
G1Z-1.0F15.0
G1Z0.0F15.0
G0X0.0Y0.0Z0.0

Let me know if it does and I'll see if I can get the program for you. Also need to know how much memory he has because the program is quite large.

SpongeBobby, my buddy said he was able to run that code OK.
As for size, he said his machine is PC-based but try to keep it under 20GB.

By the way, he can only run 4" x 9" pieces at the present time. Which should be no problem for the needlewheel.
Here is a screen shot of his results with your code sample.

[micko56]

I would like to try them out as well I have 2 ASM g4-9000 sedra 2 150 octo 1 octo 600 1 ASM g2 just let me know wich one or all of them would be happy to kick in some $ thanks

[StupidsReef]

Hey SB- I was wondering.....Would it make any differents if you stagered the pins on the wheel?? Instead of having them line up with each other?? If they didn't line up would that make them chop more, in turn reducing the amount of pins on the wheel therefor reducing the overall weight of the wheel while chopping finer bubbles?? Does that even make any sense??

Also I don't know but did you do the "O" ring mod to your's and the the ones that were testing on?? That would have hepled increase the air flow.
Anyway I have this skimmer:
http://www.aquacave.com/detail.aspx?ID=1014

@ this time the only mods I've done to mine is the "O"-ring mod and drilled out the volute until it started to turn white on the inside. I'm happy with it but anything like this that would improve the skimmer's already great working capabilities I'd be interested in. I'd pay for the wheels once completed. Also it is JMHO but your thinking "outside the box" with the pins is outstanding. I think the star style stagered with less pins and angled like the BK wheels is the key to your answer. But thats JMHO, and I'm stupid at times hence the screen name

[spongebobby]

Latest design just haven't machined it yet.

[IMG][/IMG]

[IMG][/IMG]

[IMG][/IMG]

[medic29]

Looks intriguing

[JCTewks]

Originally posted by medic29
Looks intriguing

What were the final #'s on the impellers that you tested?

[medic29]

by JCTewks [/i]
What were the final #'s on the impellers that you tested?

Here is the info from the 4 needlewheels I tested back in October.

So…to make the info easier to describe let me define the needlewheels:
• NW1 = the one with the thicker round pins
• NW2 = the one with the thinner round pins
• NW3 = the one with the thicker diamond pins
• NW4 = the one with the thinner diamond pins

In the test with NW1, I had trouble getting it to consistently turn on, when it did it would pull around 12 scfh and the wattage was around 88watts. It didn’t make that much foam in the skimmer. For whatever reason it just seemed the largest of all of the needlewheels. I had to use different spacers with it. On one of the tests the impeller actually broke in two pieces. I don’t know if it pushed out and got caught and because of the torque it snapped the impeller or what. I put the needlewheel on a different impeller and continued testing and didn’t really get any better results than above.

NW2 did somewhat better. It seems with the smaller pins, whether they are round or diamond shaped due better. NW2 did a little better than NW1. It was consistently pulling around 15scfh. The wattage was around 78. The wattage was still higher than what the motor is rated.

NW3 made some nice foam inside the skimmer body. The bubble size appeared smaller to me. The amount of air it pulled was around 18 scfh, but the wattage was still up to around 74 watts. I didn’t have to adjust the water level as high to get some skimmate.

NW4 came out the best so far. It consistently pulled around 20 scfh. It pulled around 60 watts in the test tank. The bubble size in the skimmer body also appeared smaller just like it did with NW3. With these results I decided to trial this needlewheel in my system.

So I cleaned the skimmer up/out and put it back into my sump. I ran the skimmer in my system for over a week. I did not get consistent results though, it was kind of odd. The skimmer did pull around 20 scfh of air consistently. It also had a better head of foam to it and the bubble size seemed smaller. The thing that was consistent was the wattage. It would be at 65 watts, then another time when I would check it, it would be pulling 78 watts. It would go in between those two. It may have dropped down to around 60 every now and then. After about a week and a half I noted there were not any bubbles in the skimmer body and the water level was incredibly low and the motor was making an odd noise. It wasn’t pulling any air either. I turned it off and on a couple of times without any change. I pulled the impeller out and found the needlewheel had come loose and had rounded the plastic on the impeller and the hole in the needlewheel was basically round as well. I assume the epoxy came loose and the impeller began to spin faster than the needlewheel and began rounding the shaft of the impeller.

My conclusion from these tests is the NW4 worked the best out of all of the needlewheels I tested. It seems the smaller (thinner) the pins are the better. The diamond shaped pins appear to make the smallest bubbles and give a significant amount of “head” inside the skimmer. Trying to get the needlewheel to stay on the impeller is definitely a problem. I think if you could make the whole assembly that could just slip onto the impeller like you had suggested may be the way to go. I also believe the thinner the base plate (the part the pins are attached to) is the best. I tried to adjust horizontally where the pins were located in relation to the output of the volute. The needlewheels are thicker (or taller) than the stock needlewheels, so thus the reason why I adjusted them horizontally, so that the actual needles were in the center of the volute output. I did try a couple of different venturi and these seemed to do best with the stock venturi. I tried limiting the water going through the motor to see if it would help…it did lower the wattage, but it also lowered the amount of air it pulled.

Now to compare it to the mesh-mod I had been running. The bubbles were not as fine using the mesh-mod as they were with the diamond shaped needlewheel. The amount of air pulled by the mesh-mod was consistently 30 scfh or over. The wattage used by the pump is 60 watts. Now comparing those results to the stock needlewheel…it pulls around 12 scfh and the wattage is 45 watts. I have to really adjust the water level up to get it to make any skimmate.

[JCTewks]

thanks! are you going to be test the new NW's too?

[medic29]

I hope to. That is up to SpongeBobby, his time availability and materials availability.

[GuySmilie]

Originally posted by StupidsReef
.........Also I don't know but did you do the "O" ring mod to your's and the the ones that were testing on?? That would have hepled increase the air flow.

What is the "o-ring mod"?

[medic29]

Replacing the flat rubber washer on the venturi with a o-ring. It allows the opening in the original venturi to be open.

[nursefry]

Wow, what an amazing thread. Spongebob, awesome work and great thinking out of the box from all! I just got a DNW-200 Octopus with a OCP 3000 motor, which is a virgin to mods as of yet. I would love to test your new designs and see what it's pulling for air. I have a killowatt and a dwyer air meter to give you readings from. Our reefclub does alot of DIY projects and hahnmeister is a skimmer mod geek. He helps me with alot of my questions which is how I found your thread. Been a long night of octopus reading, about 6 hours worth Just wanted to let you know, I think it's great what your working on and would love to test these. Would be happy to pay for them also, of course with no warranty! If it pulls good air and makes finer bubbles with less turbulence, I'm all for it. As I'm sure everyone in this thread is. GREAT WORK!

[spongebobby]

The current one I have running has been running great for over a month. 32 scfh and 67 watts respectively. Has been this way for the last 3 weeks.

[GuySmilie]

Any chance of getting the code for that unit?

[rbc1225]

What machine is being used to produce these? I know it is a CNC but is it a huge one or one someone can manage in their home?

[spongebobby]

No this is a industrial sized machine.

I guess you could have one at your home if you have $150,000 and the space for it.

[rbc1225]

Heheheh Nah, I have been looking at possibly getting a small one for my hobbys but not quite into it that much.