Researchers 3D print a miniature vacuum pump

Researchers 3D print a miniature vacuum pump


Mass spectrometers are extremely precise chemical analyzers that have many applications, from evaluating the safety of drinking water to detecting toxins in a patient’s blood. But building an inexpensive, portable mass spectrometer that could be deployed in remote locations remains a challenge, partly due to the difficulty of miniaturizing the vacuum pump it needs to operate at a low cost.Get more news about Vacuum Pump Seals,you can vist our website!

MIT researchers utilized additive manufacturing to take a major step toward solving this problem. They 3D printed a miniature version of a type of vacuum pump, known as a peristaltic pump, that is about the size of a human fist.

Their pump can create and maintain a vacuum that has an order of magnitude lower pressure than a so-called dry, rough pump, which doesn’t require liquid to create a vacuum and can operate at atmospheric pressure. The researchers’ unique design, which can be printed in one pass on a multimaterial 3D printer, prevents fluid or gas from leaking while minimizing heat from friction during the pumping process. This increases the lifetime of the device.

This pump could be incorporated into a portable mass spectrometer used to monitor soil contamination in isolated parts of the world, for instance. The device could also be ideal for use in geological survey equipment bound for Mars, since it would be cheaper to launch the lightweight pump into space.

“We are talking about very inexpensive hardware that is also very capable,” says Luis Fernando Velásquez-García, a principal scientist in MIT’s Microsystems Technology Laboratories (MTL) and senior author of a paper describing the new pump. “With mass spectrometers, the 500-pound gorilla in the room has always been the issue of pumps. What we have shown here is groundbreaking, but it is only possible because it is 3D-printed. If we wanted to do this the standard way, we wouldn’t have been anywhere close

Velásquez-García is joined on the paper by lead author Han-Joo Lee, a former MIT postdoc; and Jorge Cañada Pérez-Sala, an electrical engineering and computer science graduate student. The paper appears today in Additive Manufacturing.
As a sample is pumped through a mass spectrometer, it is stripped of electrons to turn its atoms into ions. An electromagnetic field manipulates these ions in a vacuum so their masses can be determined. This information can be used to precisely identify the constituents of the sample. Maintaining the vacuum is key because, if the ions collide with gas molecules from the air, their dynamics will change, reducing the specificity of the analytical process and increasing its false positives.

Peristaltic pumps are commonly used to move liquids or gases that would contaminate the pump’s components, such as reactive chemicals. They are also used to pump fluids that need to be kept clean, like blood. The substance being pumped is entirely contained within a flexible tube that is looped around a set of rollers. The rollers squeeze the tube against its housing as they rotate. The pinched parts of the tube expand in the wake of the rollers, creating a vacuum that draws the liquid or gas through the tube.