A single acting syringe pump based on Raspberry Pi - SOC

Abstract

Controlled and precise delivery of fluid is one of the essential requirement in many fluid flow applications such as micro fluidics, Micro Electro Mechanical Systems, micro-machining and in medicinal biological systems. Such deliveries are commonly achieved using syringe pump which generally employs syringes driven by an electric motor. In this work a syringe pump is operated with a Raspberry Pi - System on Single Chip, which is more user friendly than a control with an ordinary microcontroller. It runs on Linux platform which is easy to code and control using Python language. The syringe pump is actuated by stepper motor which has 200 steps per revolution so that precise flow rate is possible compared to other electrical actuators. The stepper is connected to a Dual H-Bridge L293D motor driver, which in turn is powered through the GPIO (General Purpose Input/Output) pins - an integral part of the Raspberry pi. Lead screw mechanism is used in this work to transmit rotary motion of the motor to linear motion of syringe. The pitch length travelled by the screw is minimal and controllable, resulting in a precise flow rate of the fluid which is measured experimentally.