A little over a week ago we had a little problem with the new (new to us) vacuum pump that we bought for our milker. With some help from a very generous professional the pump was taken apart to find out what was wrong. Apparently the carbon vanes had broken. We cleaned up the pump, I ordered new vanes and while waiting for the part we milked by hand. The new vanes came UPS yesterday and I spent a little time installing the new rotor vanes in the vacuum pump. To my surprise it worked when I turned it on!

Pulsator Going Back Together

Unfortunately, when we tried to use the milker this morning the pulsator did not work for some reason. When we bought the milkers I also bought a kit to rebuild a pulsator. So I sat down this evening and following the instructions I took the pulsator apart, cleaned it, replaced the worn out parts, and put the whole thing back together without any extra pieces being left over. It was very interesting to see how the thing was made and put together. After putting it all back together I put the pulsator on the milker, hooked up the vacuum pump and turned it on. It worked! Tarena helped me test it by putting her fingers in the inflations and each time the inflations squeezed she would say “Ow”. “Ow, Ow, Ow, Ow” and we have ourselves a working milker again.

My plan is to rebuild the second pulsator tomorrow, I would have done it tonight but I ran out of Brakleen for cleaning the pulsator parts. We will then have two working milkers, with new rubber, and newly rebuilt pulsators. One milker for regular use and one in reserve in case of breakage or emergency. Now if I can figure out a good backup for the vacuum pump I will be set.