OK, maybe 10 minutes.   When it comes to picking and placing surface-mount parts, a good pair of tweezers works pretty well. A good vacuum pick can be easier to use, but tweezers beat a poor vacuum pick. You can get a vacuum pick on the internet for anywhere from $40 on up to several hundred, but I’m going to show you how to make one for a fraction of that. In this post I’ll show you how to turn a $10 aquarium pump into a vacuum pump in 5 minutes. Tomorrow, I’ll show you how to make a nice, comfortable, controllable wand.  Ready?  Here goes:

I start with an “Aqua Culture” brand pump which currently sells for $10 at Walmart. This particular model has two outputs (the little white nipples visible in the photo). It’s really two diaphragm pumps in one housing. It’s just fine to start with a single-pump unit, and slightly less work:

Aqual Culture Aquarium Pump
  As far as I know, all aquarium pumps are simple diaphragm pumps, and work the same way.  All are probably put together pretty much the same way, too, so the following procedure should work (with a little adaptation) with just about any aquarium pump.

First, remove the screws which hold the plastic enclosure together.  On this one, there are four of them, found in the corners of the bottom half of the enclosure:
Removing the screws

Turn the pump over, and lift the top of the enclosure off. At one end, you’ll see something that looks a bit like a power transformer. At the other, you’ll see a plastic base (the one here is yellowish white). Attached to this are two metal arms, with a magnet on the end of each arm. There should be a screw holding the base to the bottom half of the enclosure. Remove the screw:

Removing the screw

Lift out the plastic base, with the metal arms, magnets, black rubber diaphragms, etc. attached:
Lift the base out

On this pump, there is a plastic trim piece over the two nipples. No jokes, please. Remove it:
Removing the trim piece

Gently loosen and release the black rubber diaphragms from the blue plastic piece, and fold the metal arms back exposing the blue plastic pieces:

Folding the arms back

There is a screw in the center of the blue plastic piece. Remove it:

Removing the screw

Then remove the blue piece, remembering how it was oriented:

Removing the blue piece

This exposes a black rubber piece. Notice the small hole on the right, whith a small plastic protrusion poking through it, and the larger hole in the center:

Exposing the black rubber piece

Remove the black rubber piece:

Removing the black rubber piece

Use a pointe instrument of some sort to make a small hole, about the size of the smaller of the two original holes, on the opposite side of the center hole and the same distance from the center as the original small hole:

Making a new hole

Replace the balck rubber piece as it was, but turned 180 degrees from its original orientation so the new small hole fits over the small plastic protrusion:

Replacing the black rubber piece

Replace the blue plastic piece, oriented as it was before. Replace and tighten the screw:

Replacing the blue piece

Remove the other blue plastic piece, make the hole in the black rubber piece, replace it turned 180 degrees, replace the blue plastic piece, and tighten the screw. Then, swing the two arms back to their original position:

Swing the arms back to their original position

Gently fit the two rubber diaphragms back over the blue plastic pieces, as they were originally.

Replacing the diaphragms

Replace the trim piece:

Replacing the trim piece

Put it all back into the bottom half of the enclosure:

Put it all back in the enclosure

Tighten the screw:

Tighten the screw

Replace the top half of the enclosure:

Replacing the top

And replace and tighten the four remaining screws. You’ve just reversed an aquarium pump.

Replacing the four screws

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