I was giving the reservoir thing some thought lately. I decided that the “make it work” option with a retail part just wasn’t going to cut it at this point. In this one I go through the process of making my own reservoir+pump combo to fit my needs. It takes a few tries, but I get there in the end.
A few iterations of the design and a few tweaks to get a reservoir I’m happy with.
This is a 1-7/8″ thick chunk of acrylic. I cut down it down to get a couple blanks for making this reservoir.
Had to take the dust boot off for the o-ring groove. I couldn’t get the router low enough with it on, since the bit was so short.
This was the “first run” (aka prototype) freshly off the CNC. The next operation is to flip it over and mill out the back of it for the pump.
This is the full set up with the Watercool pump-top-res middle piece and the pump installed in place.
I needed to make a few tweaks to move some things around a little, so I had to do a second version with a few improvements.
I must have done some decent measuring because this thing fits, but it’s a squeeze.
All that was left after that was to do a leak test with the whole setup on a radiator.
At 100% speed on the pump it seems to work a little better on its side. The high flow rate causes a bit of air bubble recycling back in to the pump, but I think that will calm down once I have it in the system to slow it down a little.
I’ll be working on adjusting the model to get rid of the Watercool pump top in the middle, to see where I land with that. I’ll also be adding a fill port somewhere to make life a lot easier with filling. Other than that, I’m pretty happy with this reservoir. It’s the first time I’ve made my own res, and is probably the most complex single part I’ve made on my CNC machine so far.
Thanks for checking it out!
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