Revive a dead pump with FreeCAD and 3D printing!
It’s springtime in the American Midwest, which means flowers are blooming, birds are chirping, the grass is getting greener, and at my house the fountains need to be set up for the summer. This fountain pump was struggling for a day then stopped pumping altogether and started rattling loudly. When I went to order a replacement pump I realized this was already a replacement pump from only 3 years ago, so I thought I’d do a little digging to see what went wrong and see if anything was serviceable. The little 6W 500 liter per hour pump is a familiar AC impeller type and I found that one of the impeller blades had broken off. I was impressed at the amount of scale on the fountain and the degradation of the impeller specifically. I hadn’t thought about it but I guess it makes sense as we continually add water to replace evaporated water, constantly increasing the concentration of dissolved minerals in the solution. With the replacement pump already installed in the fountain and nothing left to lose, I decided to whip up a 3D printable impeller model in FreeCAD based