I got bored waiting for my replacement tube to arrive. I 3D printed a patch to go over the broken water fitting and epoxied it on. When a pinhole leak developed through the patch I just sealed the whole thing on with more epoxy. It's not pretty, but it is water tight!
- Band-aid for broken water fitting
That also illustrates how surgical tubing (in that case 5/16" which Ace had) is extremely prone to kinking even in a fixed connection like that.
On the other end I had already successfully installed the Tygon, which produces a much tidier connection:
- Other end with Tygon tubing
When I attached the tubing to the pump I tried a few methods since I was no longer worried about babying the tube. What I found worked best was to stretch the tube with needle nose pliers (jam the jaws into the tube, then pull on the handles in the "opening" direction) twice (rotate 90 degrees and jam the jaws in farther). Then coat the glass and tube with dish soap. The stretching is especially important for the fittings which are much bigger than 1/4" (on mine, the ones at the rear of the tube). The tubing quickly relaxes. The soap that gets into the tubes washes out.
Here are some spots I made. The smaller ones were at the lowest power that would start the tube and for the quickest tap I could get on the "test" button on the PSU. The only thing I had connected to the control pins was the power pot.
- Zot!
The water pump
http://www.amazon.com/EcoPlus-Submersib ... B0018X2XT4 is great. Good flow, very quiet. The fittings are far too big for 1/4" tube (in fact, the ID of the fitting accepts the OD of the tube, which is how I have it jammed together right now). I need to take the plastic fitting to the store and find something to replace it.