Hey guys welcome back i'm Nate with the King of Random and today
We're going to build a laminar flow nozzle
Laminar flow refers to when water is traveling all in exactly one direction with no turbulence which means that when the exits a nozzle
It has a perfectly smooth stream so the purpose of the video today is to learn how to build our own laminar flow nozzle
without breaking the bank
Here's the supplies
We're gonna need for this build we have the four inch diameter plastic tubing you can use PVC or ABS
We have two of these test caps we have a nozzle that attaches to a standard garden hose some epoxy putty coffee stirrer straws
Some screen door mesh some scouring pads and a can of soda. Let's start building
This piece of PVC I have is a little too long we're only going to need a piece about a foot long so first
I'm just going to cut this in half, so it's a little more manageable
Now I'm going to cut off three rings from the PVC tube each one about 1/4 inch wide
And now we measure for the main section of to which should be between 11 and 12 inches long
Now that we've cut our pipe to length the next step is to drill holes in each of our test caps
We want to use a drill bit
That's the same size as the narrow end of the threads that way it will have a nice tight fit in the end cap
For the pipe fitting I have I'm using a three-quarter inch drill bit
Later when we drill the actual nozzle
We're going to be using this 5/8 inch drill bit using one of the quarter inch PVC rings
You've cut trace out the inside of the circle, on the 3 of the scouring pads
Cut along the line and you'll have three circles made from the scouring pads
Cut through one of your quarter inch PVC rings
With the PVC rings we want to figure out how much we need to cut off in order to fit the entire ring
inside our PVC tube
Use your first cut ring as a guide to mark on the other two where to cut
Cut out three pieces of screen large enough that you have a little bit of a border around each of your PVC rings
Empty a can of soda and rinse it out well
Using a knife or a pair of scissors cut the top and bottom off of your soda can
Be careful because the jagged edges of the can might be sharp
You'll want an unbent piece of the can wall about 3 inches square
Sandwich a piece of aluminum between two smooth boards and screw it together tight making sure your screws go through your sheet of metal
This piece of aluminum is going to be your nozzle where the water comes out
Here's where we're going to use that 5/8 inch drill bit drill through the top board and the layer of metal beneath it
By screwing into the metal sheet you should prevent any movement you get a nice clean cut
Once you finish drilling undo the screws and remove your sheet of aluminum
Trim the excess so you have about a 1 inch border around the hole you drilled
Drilling has probably left a little bit of a burr on the aluminum so we want to try and sand that off using a very
High grit sandpaper first I'm going to sand it with 400 grit sandpaper, and then with some trip a lot steel wool
Alright guys quick update we have now cut prepped and prepared all of our parts
And it's time to start assembling our laminar flow nozzle first
We want to take our three sponges and press them inside the tube
Leaving about an inch and a half at the bottom next we want to attach one of our screens to the ring and press that
Into the tube place the screen over the tube and then squeeze the ring together so that the gap is closed
Using a knife or scissors remove the excess screen, but leave a small border around it
Being careful to apply pressure to the whole ring at once
Lower it and the screen down until it is pressed up against the sponges now what we're going to do is fill the whole tube
with the coffee stirrer straws
You'll want to make sure all of your straws are pointing the same direction
So the water will flow smoothly if any of your straws go in sideways make sure you straighten it out
We also want to make sure that the entire opening is full of straws so keep putting them in until there's no gaps left
Some people have tried building these with regular drinking straws and that might work pretty well, too
But I think it works better using these coffee straws
So with the sponges and the straws in place we have a device that will mostly get the water traveling in one smooth direction
But we have a little bit of space after the straws and we want to make sure that the water doesn't start picking up any
Turbulence we're gonna put in two more layers of the screens held in via the PVC rings
Which should help prevent the water from building up any turbulence before it leaves the nozzle
This first ring you want to push almost all the way down to the straw is leaving a gap of only about a quarter of
An inch the second ring you only want to have about one inch below the top of the tube now
We're going to attach our flow nozzle to our end cap we'll attach a piece of electrical tape to the flow nozzle
But before we secure it on flip it over and line it up to make sure that the flow nozzle
Hole is right in the center of the hole
That's drilled into your end cap press the tape onto the end cap to secure it in place
Tape securely all the way around the flow nozzle, so there are no exposed edges
Now that our flow nozzle is attached to our cap we're going to fit that over our pipe
It's probably a pretty tight fit but with a little work
You should be able to fit the test cap into the end of the pipe the last step before we test
This is to attach our hose nozzle to the other end cap and attach that to the pipe as well
If you're having a hard time fitting the hose nozzle into the hole you've drilled into the cap you can expand it a little bit
by using some sandpaper
Once your nozzle is attached to the end cap press the end cap down into the pipe
There you have it our laminar flow nozzle is now ready for a test fire before we make all of the connections permanent, okay
So we're gonna hook our laminar flow device up
And I've removed the cap because we want to see the water as it's rising up
You can see just look how smooth this water is you can see through it almost perfectly because there's no disturbance to it
You can see some air bubbles are getting trapped underneath the screen and even down on top of the straws
So I'm just gonna tip it try and get those air bubbles together and come out
That is not laminar flow all right
I'm gonna turn the water off put the cap back on and then see how this is flowing out
Okay, you can already see this is working pretty well look at this little stream
It's a it's just this nice clear jet you can easily see right through it
I'm gonna try turning up the pressure just a little bit
Alright once again, that's a higher pressure. It's still going pretty well
There is a little bit of waviness right as it's coming out of the nozzle so one thing
I'm just gonna try I'm gonna turn off the water
And I'm gonna sand down the nozzle just a little bit with some high grit sandpaper to smooth it out
Just a tiny bit more feeling all the way around that that's feeling pretty smooth by now
There we go that is a nice clean stream, you can see right through it it looks really good
Let's seal this thing up and make all of the connections permanent alright as an update
We've now tested this and after a little bit of additional sanding on the nozzle to make it extra smooth. It's working pretty
Well you probably saw that a little bit of water was seeping out the edges in the hose connector spot
So now what we want to do is seal up all the connections so that it doesn't leak at all this two-part epoxy putty is
Strong waterproof and holds up under pressure just mix the two parts together until you have a uniform color
And then you'll have a minute or two to apply it to whatever it needs to be glued
Alright now that our putty is mixed
We're going to take half of it and use it on the outside and half of it on the inside of our hose nozzle
Well the putty is carrying on the hose nozzle
We're gonna use a little bit more of it on the top of the cap to hold that onto the device
Boozing out all over as I squeeze this cap down onto the pipe
And you use a little bit of extra putty to make sure that the gaps are really well filled that's one side attached now
Let's glue on the other one
The putty holding all of our nozzle pieces connected is now dry and we're going to sand it just a little bit to clean up
the edges
This is all sealed up and ready to go, but before we hook it up to the hose again
You know here at the king of random we like to decorate
All right, we've got this bad boy all decorated. Let's go hook it up to the hose again
Here we go are working laminar flow nozzle
You can see look how clean this whole line of arc is it almost looks like a piece of glass
but of course if you touch it it splatters everywhere a
Couple of tips if you're trying to troubleshoot your laminar flow device because you're not getting a nice smooth flow out of it you'll want
To be sure that you have at least two or three of those sponges down at the bottom because they really help slow the water
Down so that the straws can do their job of straightening all the water out
You'll want to make sure that the straws are all packed in tightly touching the sides of the tube
And if there are no gaps
And they aren't moving around in there the pieces of screen will really help
Prevent any turbulence from building up in the space between the straws and the end of the nozzle and lastly
Probably the most important thing is that your nozzle has to be
extremely smooth
it's hard to spend too much time on this if you can feel even the
slightest divot or burr or scratch in the aluminum nozzle
Then that's going to affect the water flow all right one of the main
Indicators that you have a good laminar flow is that your water stays together as a cohesive stream all the way to the end
Look at how the water coming out of this nozzle is still in a tight stream even when it's hitting the ground
When the water is truly moving with a laminar flow it's amazing how clear it gets check this out
There you have it the laminar flow nozzle as you saw it works
Pretty well at low pressure at higher pressure the stream does start to get a little bit wonky
And I know one of the reasons for that is higher pressure especially out of a garden hose is a little less consistent
I have plans for the future to look into what I can do to make it so that we have more
Consistent pressure so that at higher pressures our stream of water will travel farther
Let's do a quick recap of the build we took a piece of PVC and added a hose
Intake valve the water is slowed down by running through some sponges
And it's then straightened out by running through some coffee stirring straws
There are a couple layers of screen mesh at the end to prevent any turbulence from building up in the dead space after the straws
In the tube it then exits through a perfectly round super smooth
Hole all of which gives us a perfectly smooth stream of water with no turbulence
So it almost looks like a stream of glass coming out of the nozzle
There you have it you now know how to build your very own laminar flow nozzle without breaking the bank
we are hoping that we can revisit this in the future to figure out how to add a little more pressure and
Maybe some fancy things like putting lights into the stream of water
Thanks for joining us for this project today, and we'll see you in the next one taki then
There's a giant fly
Now it's a dead fly hello the clouds did part and the Sun did smile down upon them
Really confusing they're shot. It's just like a drinking fountain with a lot of water coming out
Hey guys
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