[WriterOfMinds]

I made a little home-built hydraulics system and did a writeup on it. It is NOT very capable yet, but it's a bare bones demo with my rather jury-rigged choice of parts.

https://writerofminds.blogspot.com/2023/10/poor-persons-first-hydraulic-system.html

[HS]

Could you print an entire hydraulic pump mechanism? At first glance, some types seem like they could work - I've got no experience with hydraulics, but some kind of tall gear pump would be my best bet from what I've seen so far.

[WriterOfMinds]

Yeah, that or a peristaltic pump might get rid of the friction issues from using the syringe, possibly. They also would not need the check valves.

[WriterOfMinds]

I've been working on this in the last few months and finally have a writeup of the updates! https://writerofminds.blogspot.com/2024/08/hydraulics-ii-pressure-is-on.html Click through to the blog for a video.

The quick version is that I did replace the syringe pump with a peristaltic pump (designed and made by me) and the "cylinder" actuator (also a syringe) with an inflatable bladder. This achieved more reasonable performance, and I'm looking forward to finding ways to do real work with this now. The bladder is made from heat-sealed plastic bags with a 3d-printed valve stem glued in. I'll be able to custom-make them in any size and shape I need at very little expense.

[MagnusWootton]

Really impressive work, and u just helped me countless amounts!  thank you.

In my one I just go bag to bag,   I have a flat bag where the water is in area only, and it goes to a circular bellows kinda like one of those air blowing bellows with air out the centre, the bellows crushing rotational-wise between your hands like a door hinge.  So you put your foot on it, and it transfers to the arm,  I'm not sure what my pipe and actuator sizes need to be,   if the pipe is too small theres too much resistance and I'll need more force to push it down, and the bigger the cap is at the end the more torque I get I think, but the slower the actuation is.

It comes down to metres a second required for the flow rate,  but to get metres a second requires force.

So to actuate the flat bag, Im going to use capacitive actuation to shoot it out into the actuator.  And that gives me the possibility of maybe recharging the battery with it after I've used the energy to charge it,  because its a capacitor and the charge remains in the cap after uve fired it!    but u need an extra transistor for that, and u open the cap up to the battery after uve used it. (when u want to release)

I also use a double pipe system,  where I come out of the resoviour bags, to the actuator,  where it then fights against another actuator, which then carries its water back to the resoviour,  so I have a push only resoviour it doesnt pull, but it means I need to twice the pipes and actuators to do it,  to get the simplified resoviour,  which is just a pack of bags, one per actuator, with the copper tape taped onto em,  then I stack em like a book behind the arm.  (and it gets a little technical lookin' doing hydraulics.)

Thats what I'm doing - untested yet,  I seem to have not your magic ability to go from theory to practice in such speed.   it takes me ages to do anything for real out of the computer....