Sick and Tired of Waveline pumps

[daplatapus]

So for those who've asked questions and/or offered to help me out with this little project here's everything I'm dealing with:

1st Gen controller:

Front



Back:



Guts/Innards

[daplatapus]

2nd Gen controller:

Front



back



Guts/Innards

[daplatapus]

Pump. Connector from controller has 3 pins

front



back



sorry, no gut shots of the pump. I can get at the impeller but thats it. Pretty sure it'll all be encased in epoxy inside anyway...

[mike31154]

You already have the MW power supply rated at 24 VDC, 8.8 amps. That's roughly 211 watts. The photo you posted of the pump specs shows a max of 170 watts. Have you tried hooking the power supply directly to the pump? Should work if you wish to run it at full speed. Just need to confirm polarity of the leads. The 3rd wire is no doubt feedback to the controller & not needed if running at full bore without control circuitry.

If you're handy with a soldering iron & really liked the way the 1st gen controller worked, try replacing the electrolytic capacitors on the board, the firecracker cans. Quite often these fail & render the rest of the electronics useless. Sometimes you can see the failure in the form of bulging at the top of the can. Many an expensive electronic component has been trashed due to failure of a few cheap capacitors in the power supply. They're only a few $$s each & worth a try to see if it will resurrect the original controller.

[daplatapus]

Originally Posted by mike31154

You already have the MW power supply rated at 24 VDC, 8.8 amps. That's roughly 211 watts. The photo you posted of the pump specs shows a max of 170 watts. Have you tried hooking the power supply directly to the pump? Should work if you wish to run it at full speed. Just need to confirm polarity of the leads. The 3rd wire is no doubt feedback to the controller & not needed if running at full bore without control circuitry.

Hey Mike, is there a way to figure out what the polarity is without damaging either the pump or power supply? Can I just plug 2 wires coming from the power supply to the different combinations possible and see which 2 work? Are the only 3 things that will happen be 1) the pump run backwards if the polarity is crossed, 2) not run at all or 3) run properly?

Or can I smoke something by just trial and error?

[RDNanoGuy]

You can't run a dc pump directly off a regular power supply. The controller actually switches the coils in the pump on and off very rapidly in a pattern to get the magnet in the middle to spin. Without the controller the motor will make about half a revolution and stop. It is more like an a/c motor in that respect.

[mike31154]

I wouldn't recommend a trial & error method of determining polarity for a motor. Not likely that anything bad would happen with 24 volts, but not worth the chance really. Try to determine polarity with your multimeter. As mentioned earlier, if the signal from the controller is some sort of pwm or pulse, an oscilloscope is the best way to detect that, but the multimeter should react by jumping off zero. If you have an old analog multimeter, you may be able to see the needle move. It will either jump in a positive direction or try to hit the stop at the left of the meter display.

I asked in an earlier post if you could determine whether the motor is a PMG (permanent magnet) DC motor. If it is, it should run on straight DC voltage no problem, this is how all the little 12vdc cooling fan motors work. The coil circuitry design of a PMG DC motor is such that the voltage is switched internally to keep the rotor moving. However, on a low cost product such as the Wavelines, it will be next to impossible to find out more details on the design. Even more established companies producing higher cost hardware are unlikely to be very free with their design information. Best of luck with this endeavour!

[_Adrian_]

Originally Posted by daplatapus

Pump. Connector from controller has 3 pins

front



back



sorry, no gut shots of the pump. I can get at the impeller but thats it. Pretty sure it'll all be encased in epoxy inside anyway...

Ill buy those off you if you have given up on them

I have a project on the horizon that involves DUAL high current BLDC controller with integrated I2C control

I understand the need of these manufacturers to "compact" these units to make it easier to hide, however my issue is with lack of cooling which in the end reduces overall life of the unit. My idea always been over engineer it and make sure that the unit can drive 5 to 10 times its normal workload.

Would you not pay more money to know your never have to upgrade another controller ??

[daplatapus]

Lol, I haven't given up on the pump yet. I love the pumps. I love the original controller. But poor cooling, fan and bearing designs on the controller resulted in burnt out controllers.
I really want to know what the heck the difference is in the gen1 controllers and any of the next gens. I still have a brand new controller (gen1) and it easily pushes probably 1000 gph at 12' of head. Switch to the other controller...less than 2-300 gph. It's completely gutless. I've had one of the guys from Waveline tell me maybe the magnet has de-magnetized, they sent me new impellers.
For some reason no one over there believes me that it is 100% the controller.

[_Adrian_]

My plan is to use an integrated H bridge from ST.
It's the only simple alternative that supports 30A continuous duty at 600V for a sensor less BLDC application. The motor might be rated at 170W and 24V... with a bit of quick math 170/24=7.03A is actual draw.

Now to actually further get into engineering we still don't know whatever its a Wye or Delta configuration of the windings inside the motor.