Make:

I had used a flowbench in college and knew how they worked and how to calculate airflow from them, so I stopped porting and built this flowbench. A flowbench uses vacuum motors to create a differential pressure across a cylinder head (or whatever you want to measure the flow of) and an orifice (a hole) of know flow. By measuring the pressure drop across the cylinder head as a percentage of the know orifice you can calculate the flow thru the cylinder head. To do this all you need are vacuum motors, which I took out of used vacuum cleaners I got from the thrift shop. Some sheet metal orifices, which I used shells of a washer and dryer I had, because I had taken the motors out to make my planer and disk sanders and hadn't gotten rid of them yet. Manometers to measure the pressure change. These too are easy to make with wood and plastic tubing. And then a wooden bench to hold it all. I built my first one for $120 and am still using it three years later. Link.

Your comment will be posted in the background and may take a few minutes to appear on the site; you do not need to re-post.

Allowable html: a href,br/,p,b,strong,em,i,ol,ul,li,blockquote,pre

Name:

Comment:

Security Code:

Subscribe to MAKE Magazine!

Subscribe today, save 42% and get web access to MAKE free. MAKE Digital Edition is available only to subscribers.

$34.95 / 1 year
(4 Quarterly Issues)

Subscribe now