Cleaning Out a ADI Vacuum Pump

One of my goals as I continue on my woodworking/making journey is to be able to harvest and stabilize my own wood, as well as potentially get into casting my own resin blanks. To do both of those things I'll need a vacuum pump*. For stabilizing, I need to be able to create a vacuum chamber (suck the air out); for casting, i need to be able to use a pressure pot (overfill the air). Once I can create my own blanks I can move onto trying to get a laser to do engraving.

*You can use an air compressor to fill a pressure pot

I was talking to my father-in-law about this and he told me he thought he had a vacuum pump somewhere. We went out to his shed and dug this machine out. He said it's been sitting for years, but we plugged it in and the motor ran just wasn't moving any air. So i decided to take it apart and see if i could get it working.

I contacted the company to try and find more information about it but did not receive a return call, however they still manufacture a similar model that I was able to use as a reference.

Materials Used:

Vacuum Pump - Air Dimensions Inc. Dia-Vac Model # M01310N

Allen Wrenches - 3/16 and 5/32

Wire brushes

Q-Tips

Packing paper (to contain the mess)

Dust Mask (this was extremely dirty with a lot of dust in the air)

There are four 3/16 head bolts, remove those in order to remove the head, exposing the diaphragm.

Once you've done that you can use the smaller Allen key (5/32) and remove the two valve body screws. While doing this to keep pressure on the bottom of the head to prevent the valve body from falling out.

Once those screws are removed you can take out the valve body, which will allow you to access the gasket and two valve disc.

DISCLAIMER - I forgot to take pictures while doing this so in the pictures the parts are mostly cleaned out.

At this point use your wire brush and q-tips to clean out the head and valve body components

Now you just need to put everything back together and test out the pump to see if everything is working.Luckily for me it seems to be.