Hy Flo pump

[Maker]

Anyone know about these?

This website makes them sound quite sought after but unfortunately, this one's broken;

That's what's inside, just a pair of coils on a laminated core with the wheel between them. There's no continuity across one of the coils so no plugging it in does nothing. There's a few on eBay for £100 so it would be quite nice to sell it working.
Do we think it would be possible to repair/rewind the faulty coil? I haven't taken it out to dig any deeper yet

 

[brightspark]

shame I had a good one and flung it

 

[garethp]

I think winding or rewinding coils is pretty straightforward, the crucial parts are size of wire, number of turns and (not sure about this one) direction of the winding. You'll need new insulation material to go under/over the coil as well.

One of my mates has an interest in aquarium air pumps, I've never asked much about them but I'm now thinking this is the type of thing.

 

[Barking Mat]

Maker your website links goes to fly and arbour presses pdf.

If its an aquarium pump whats with the rotating disk, had a brief look on the net but, urm?

 

[Maker]

shame I had a good one and flung it

There's one in the corner of my old physics classroom, no one touched in the 5 years I was there, should have let it fall into me bag.

Maker your website links goes to fly and arbour presses pdf.

If its an aquarium pump whats with the rotating disk, had a brief look on the net but, urm?

Try it now.

I think the disk is the equivalent of the armature in a motor, the changing magnetic field in the coil must induce eddy currents in the disk and the force this produces pushes the wheel around. Running a neodymium magnet past it has a lot of resistance so it's clearly very conductive, maybe it's plated copper. I think it works the same way as an old electricity meter with the spinning disk.

 

[Muppet]

It's definitely an aquarium pump ,
Expensive when new , they sound like Ivor the engine when running,
Lossen the grub screw on the pump spindle , so asto take the résistance of the disk,
Plug it in and spin the disk, doesn't take much to move the disk,
Does work on magnetic field ,
Cleaning tha air pumps also help ,
Very therapeutic when running ,

 

[awemawson]

They work on the same principal as the disk in an old style electricity meter - I have a small one sat on my cupboards in the workshop

 

[GKQ]

Hy Flo where the first reliable, small air pumps / vacuum pump for science labs. Induction drive, very simple very reliable, except some times they didn't restart after power cuts if the disc stopped in just the wrong place, in which case your fish died !
They become popular for aquariums when they changed the design and brought the price down, early ones had brass pump parts and later ones chnaged to plastic. As soon as the vibrating diaphragm air pumps came along and under cut them both in power consumption and price, they disappeared. Shame, as long as you look after them oil / clean regularly ( probably another reason they disappeared ) they go on for years. There are also double piston ones. You can still buy them http://sonik-systems.com/pumps/

Graham