I tried a solenoid I scavenged from underwater valves on my 3D printed valve system and it didn’t work (duh).  It was just too weak.  The original valve spreads the force from the high-pressure side across a larger area, so I guess the spring return can be comparatively weak.  My design didn’t do that.  I also didn’t cut my compression spring down very much, but I qualitatively determined that the solenoid wasn’t generating a useful amount of force by holding it on the magnetic core while turning the power on and off a bunch of times.  I am a terrible engineer.

So I went back to square 2 and decided to remake the original brass valve body in lighter ABS plastic using our Makerbot 3D printer.  The beta version looked like this: Continue reading →