Pump + Timer = Bottle Filler?

[NorCal]

not to burst your bubble - But I am going to have to say no on the Consistent levels in a bottle - due to the pump and all the factors that lead to this - I know you want a cheap bottle filler - but this is a trasfer pump that delivers over 3 gallons per minute.

VPM, you are probably right, but hey, it's the off season. If I wasn't tinkering with this, I would just be drinking wine. To get an idea on how accurate the fill needs to be, I took one on my clear Skeeter Pee bottles so
I could see through it. I marked it off and then using a 10ml pipette, measure the difference between the low and the high fill target. The difference was 6ml. So 750ml plus or minus 3ml. That looks like a pretty darn tight target.

I did anticipate needing to tightly control the stopping of the flow, so I also ordered a $5 12V water valve from eBay, that I could open and close with the same timer. I'm thinking that might provide a more accurate start/stop of the wine than just turning the pump on and off. I ordered the part a week ago, so hopefully within the next week or so the timer and valve will arrive from Hong Kong.

 

[seth8530]

Keep us in the loop.

 

[NorCal]

I learned more about this pump, which as Steve mentioned is an on-demand, low cost pump, typically used for transfers. This pump will will run until it hits it's pressure limit and then it will turn itself off. So, if you have a hose with a valve on it and the valve is closed, the pump will turn itself off. This can be a good feature that I may be able to exploit. What I found that it doesn't do well is run smoothly if the flow is overly restricted. In effect, the pump will rapidly turn on and off, as the pump is either running 100% or 0%. So, to get a nice even flow, it has to be allowed to run without too much restriction. A metered return loop to the source should allow me regulate the flow to the filler. The down side is that the the pump would be constantly running.

The other thing that I learned (and mentioned by others here) is that the bottles itself will vary from bottle to bottle. Since I need to shoot for 750ml +- 3ml, there is less than 1% margin of error to play with in the variation bottle to bottle and consistency in delivering that volume time after time. There simply may be too much inherent variation to have a 100 out of 100 successful, hit one button fill operation....we shall see.

I am also working on a third scenario, which will be a very low cost means to sense when the wine reaches the neck of the bottle, which would trigger closing the valve. I have some work to do on this path, but if the first two fail, this may work.

 

[seth8530]

Sounds like you have a plan.

 

[spaniel]

The autosiphon devices work very well and are cheap. Unless it gets you to simultaneous multi-bottle filling, I'm not sure where all this effort gets you...except satisfying an intellectual itch (which is not necessarily something to be dismissed!).

 

[WineQuest]

Wonder why nearly every commercial winery out there uses a gravity or siphon filler that shuts off based on level?

 

[mikewatkins727]

Need to delete my comments. Please let me.

 

[vacuumpumpman]

I learned more about this pump, which as Steve mentioned is an on-demand, low cost pump, typically used for transfers. This pump will will run until it hits it's pressure limit and then it will turn itself off. So, if you have a hose with a valve on it and the valve is closed, the pump will turn itself off. This can be a good feature that I may be able to exploit. What I found that it doesn't do well is run smoothly if the flow is overly restricted. In effect, the pump will rapidly turn on and off, as the pump is either running 100% or 0%. So, to get a nice even flow, it has to be allowed to run without too much restriction. A metered return loop to the source should allow me regulate the flow to the filler. The down side is that the the pump would be constantly running.

The other thing that I learned (and mentioned by others here) is that the bottles itself will vary from bottle to bottle. Since I need to shoot for 750ml +- 3ml, there is less than 1% margin of error to play with in the variation bottle to bottle and consistency in delivering that volume time after time. There simply may be too much inherent variation to have a 100 out of 100 successful, hit one button fill operation....we shall see.

I am also working on a third scenario, which will be a very low cost means to sense when the wine reaches the neck of the bottle, which would trigger closing the valve. I have some work to do on this path, but if the first two fail, this may work.

I work with these pumps alot and very similiar ones also - If you want PM me and I would be more than happy to put my 2 cents in.

I understand that you want to do something different and unique - but you have to think about bottle height in 750 and 375 ml - if you are going that route ?

I know what it feels like by staying up all night till I finish an idea in my head !!

Thanks Steve

 

[NorCal]

I got my $5 timer and $6 valve in. Both are working on the bench with 12v. Going to try go get the timer operational with the pump this week and see how consistently it will pump, given the exact same operating time.

 

[NorCal]

I was able to play with the pump, timer and valve. The valve and the timer worked well, but at the 750ml volume, it was only accurate to plus or minus 15ml. It needs to be plus or minus 3 ml. I may try slowing the flow down and see how much it improves the accuracy.

I have another idea of using the timer and valve in a gravity flow and using another timer/ valve to auto back fill the gravity feed. A bit more complicated than I want, but I may give it a try.

 

[seth8530]

Honestly, try slowing down the flow with a bypass line. I think that would help out your +- 15 ml.

 

[Putterrr]

They make a device for the blind that will beep when the level of liquid reaches the sensor. Maybe something like this can be used to turn you valve off/on

cheers

 

[richmke]

IMHO: I doubt you are going to get to +/- 3ml without better (expensive) equipment.

Borrow from the AI1-

Dual port stopper with an overflow line
The intake for the overflow line is at your desired fill line
Have your setup overfill the bottle so wine goes into the overflow line
Have the overflow line drain lower than the bottle (need this anyway).
When the pump stops, remove the stopper just enough to break the air seal.
Gravity will siphon the excess wine out down to the fill line.

 

[vacuumpumpman]

Rich
I actually talked to him several days ago and he actually owns a vacuum pump already. My suggestion was to purchase the bottling setup, but this is something he wants to pursue

 

[NorCal]

This project has to take a back seat for a while, but I'm not done tinkering with it. Slowing down the flow, putting in a recirculating buffer in are my next steps. The bottom line is that the flow really needs to slow down near the end of the fill. It would be nice to fill the first half of the bottle fast, then slow it down. However, the goal is a simple, push a button and have it fill the bottle solution. The good thing is the $10 worth of timer and the valve proved to work well.

 

[richmke]

Seems like the main benefit is to let you cork a bottle while you wait for one to fill. It is not like you can set it to fill your 30 bottles, and come back in 20 minutes.

Assuming that, then getting the bottle 90% filled, and then spending a few seconds topping it off, accomplishes 90% of what you want to achieve. It is getting the last 10% that is really challenging/expensive.

I'm guessing that frequent start/stops puts a lot of wear on the pump. Also, running at slow speeds for the pump.

 

[seth8530]

Will it all depends on how he decides to slow the flow abd came the flow off. I can see at least one way he could do this where he could keep the pump running continually, and keep the flow at low speeds without even touching the pump.

 

[NorCal]

Rich, I've bottled using a gravity 4 bottle stand, vacuum, wand and all of them needed some individual bottle tweaking or full time attention to get the fill height right. Wether it was dealing with foam or inconsistency of the equipment. A big deal? No not really, especially seeing how I will be bottling less than 500 bottles next year. Still a challenge that I'm interested in pursuing.

The pump is designed to come on and off by itself, I don't think there is any harm that would be done to the pump. A better pump would be one that had a variable output, versus being 100% on/off.

 

[JohnT]

Here is a question, and I am not too sure this might not have already been brought up, why base filling on time?

Wouldn't it be much, much better to base the filling on weight? Wouldn't some sort of weight activated switch be much easier to "dial in"?

 

[richmke]

Wouldn't it be much, much better to base the filling on weight? Wouldn't some sort of weight activated switch be much easier to "dial in"?

Weight presumes identical bottles.

1) He might be re-using bottles of different types/shapes/etc.
2) It is possible that the variation in weight of even identical bottles is more than the weight of a few ml of wine.