Gikfun DC 6V - 12V Micro Self-priming Diaphragm Pump R385 Suitable for Water Dispenser, Cooler, Small Pumping Projects EK1970

I have been using this pump for a few weeks. So far it is working well.I had to drill 4 small holes in the side of the dispenser cabinet to mount it.I needed a unit with the pump & motor assembly mounted horizontally and with the water connections vertical. I didn't see one like this on Amazon.caNOTE: This pump has tapered hose connections without ridges to secure the tubing.This probably allows for different tubing I.D.s, but I was concerned about the hoses sliding off the pump's input and output connections.It was a bit of DIY project to mount it in our water dispenser. I used four # 6 stainless screws and Nylox locking nuts. The pump is mounted vertically, with the tubing connections pointing down.Hope this is helpful.

This does not nor does it claim to come with a power cord. This is a non-issue.The pump body uses mild steel screws. THESE WILL RUST if using this for water.DON'T use this for tropical fish that are sensitive to iron in the water. Certain species of fish and inverts can not tolerate iron in the water. Avoid these pumps.Manufacturer, please consider using stainless steel or even better, external clips to attach these pump heads to the motor.

The product description said this pump was powered by an electric cord. The pump arrived without a power cord. It is of no use to me with no way to connect power to it. I will be returning the item if a power cord does not arrive soon.

Suited my needs nicely.

I was looking for a small self-priming pump to move homebrewed beer around fermenters, kegs, bottles, etc. This pump from Gikfun looked like it would meet my needs well. It arrived in good order in a plain, small but stout cardboard box. Two soft silicone mounts were included and installed on the pump. Electrical connections were via soldered tabs.This little pump is rated at 1.5 to 1.8 gallons/min and so should transfer 6 gallons of beer in less than 4 minutes – which is much faster than I get from a siphon. I checked out the pump electrically while pumping water with no head and found that it drew about 350mA at 12V. The pumping speed at 12V was 0.55 gallons/min through 6ft of ¼” silicone tubing. This is a lot slower than the rated flow rate, but it could be the length of the tubing that caused this reduction. This is still fast enough for my purposes.I then connected it to an LED dimmer control box to see if I could control the pump speed – see the photo below. Note the fly-back diode connected across the controller output to protect the internal MOSFET driver from the back-EMF from the motor’s inductive load. This circuit worked very well, and I was able to adjust the flow of liquid from its full speed down to just a small trickle.The soft rubbery mounting worked well and kept the vibrations and noise to a minimum while the pump was running.One concern I had with this sort of pump was that there may be a lot of internal turbulence causing significant air to be dissolved in the beer. The pump was very efficient at pushing out the air on start-up and, after this, I saw no bubbles in the liquid flow-stream.A second concern was with the shape of the pump inlet and outlet ports on the pump. These were tapered towards their ends – see photo. I was worried that tubing would just pop off these ports and I think that would be likely with firmer tubing like PVC, polyurethane, polypropylene, etc. With soft ¼” silicone tubing this was not a problem as long as the tubing was fitted to the ports when all was dry.Gikfun seems to offer two versions of this pump. This is the long-life version with a claimed lifetime of 1000 hours. This sounds a lot but it’s not really – it’s just over 40 days of continual use. The description on Amazon recommends that it’s not used for more than 30 minutes continuously (presumably it will get hot). So, this pump is designed just for fairly short jobs and shouldn’t be used for continuous purposes like small fountains or aquarium filters. For homebrewing purposes, intermittent use is not a problem.This a small but useful utility pump that does the job and does it well. It’s not designed for continuous use and doesn’t connect well with firm tubing. The flow rates I experienced were a lot less than those specified in the Amazon listing but good enough for me.