Venus 2000 Power Unit Internals

The current Venus 2000 power unit is built extremely well. It uses quality industrial parts such as the carefully selected DC gear head motor. There is little that can be done to further optimize the supplied basic power unit. You get what you pay for with the Venus 2000, and most of that goes to pay for what is now the black cube, the power unit. I have always preferred the unit with the detachable speed control box on a cord.

The original Venus was a fire engine red unit permanently built into an enclosure like a black plastic brief case. It was significantly larger overall, but did have storage space for the hoses. The new Venus 2000 format is MUCH better in my opinion.

 The current Venus 2000 power unit has a nice sturdy handle on the top, and four rubber feet on the bottom. It has a connector for the remote speed control unit, a small fitting for the stroke control hose, a larger fitting for the receiver hose, and an A/C power connector which has a surprise inside. The black turtle shell case is secured with four flat head screws with hex driver sockets in them for an Allen key.

The Venus 2000 control box is available on a cord as a handheld unit. The right photo shows the speed controller as supplied by the company. The green toggle switch lights up when the unit is turned on. The cord uses a six pin connector to handle the connections to the speed control potentiometer and the power switch.

My control unit is slightly different than a factory unit. The toggle switch used to have a light in the toggle, but the switch failed. Abco would have been glad to replace it, but I was in a hurry and went to Radio Shack where I got an almost equivalent switch rocker switch. But this new switch did not have a built in power light, so I added the green LED on the side. So a stock unit is a tiny bit different. It is still can be hard to notice the "power on" light sometimes.

. The photo at the right shows my modified controller bundled with the stroke control hose with its white plastic clamp used to seal and unseal the hose. A new module by the company has significantly upgraded this feature, replacing the white plastic clamp with a very nice double push button air valve arrangement. This new replacement for the old plastic pinch clip works quite well and is an outstanding idea and implementation, though I could not resist the temptation to try to improve on it.

In order to prevent leaving the unit on accidentally and stalled, I usually unplug the A/C power cord either from the wall or the front of the power unit when not in use. I have never had the Venus 2000 seriously overheat when set to minimum and left on. It would not be good to leave it stalled under heavy load however. I just find it easy to pull out the A/C power chord at the front of the  black Venus 2000 power box and there then is no question.

NOTE: The Venus 2000 has both standard A/C and high voltage DC voltages present inside when it is powered on. You should only have the cover off when the power cord is completely unplugged and removed from the front of the unit.

There is an A/C power fuse, rather hidden in the power connector on the black power unit. It is a little tray that pulls out. At one time there was a problem with these fuses blowing, but a factory fix some years ago seems to have solved that problem and I have not had to get into my supply of replacement fuses in several years. The photo shows the little drawer which can be quite hard to see, and even pop open with your fingernails once you do find it. The drawer is in two sections, the front section is for storage of the spare fuse and the active fuse is in the rear section.

The fuses are small units available at Radio Shack or car parts stores. Replacement fuses are not hard to find if you should happen to blow one. It is worth checking this A/C power fuse if your Venus 2000 suddenly goes completely dead for no apparent reason. Even after Abco assured me on the phone that the fuse tray really was there, I still had to look very closely to find this little drawer. That is it, pulled out, below the A/C power connector in the photo. The round multi-pin connector at the top is for the remote speed control unit.

Power Unit Adjustments

The Venus 2000 has several internal adjustments. With long wear and tear, you can be required to replace the main diaphragm at rare intervals. It is a rather soft and squishy material. The only real trick to replacing one is the careful positioning and tightening of the large hose clamp. If you don't get things quite right, the diaphragm can just ooze off the housing when you try to tighten the hose clamp. But a bit of fiddling with the exact positioning of the clamp and edge of the diaphragm usually gets it taken care of in just a few minutes.

So far I have had to replace one diaphragm and really it was my own fault. An experiment I tried severely abused the diaphragm and caused it to fail. I replaced it a second time to upgrade to a new softer type that Abco developed that is generally better. In the photo you can see the large diaphragm and just make out the setscrew and the hose clamp. Also the top of the electronic speed control board, which is what the hand control unit regulates through, and the mechanical stroke length control settings on the drive wheel.

There is also a mechanical stroke adjustment that can be usefully changed, but once you find your personal range, it never seems to need changing. This is not to be confused with the adjustment allowed by the stroke length control hose. But is based on the drive wheel which has five positions on which the diaphragm crank can be installed, changing the basic length of the diaphragm movement on each rotation of the gear motor. This mechanical stroke length control is about the only user adjustable setting inside the power unit you can, or should probably mess with.

The inner most mounting hole is a very short stroke and not likely to be useful except under special circumstances. The fifth and outer hole is quite a long stroke and results in wild action that may be impossible to control. Holes 2, 3, and 4, the middle three are the most likely settings to be right for a give user. Adjusting this is discussed later on a separate page. In the photo you can see the diaphragm, the stroke rod, the electronic speed control board and the drive wheel with its five positions for the coupling screw.

Detailed View Inside the Power Unit Housing

 I personally have found greasing one critical area at long intervals to be worth doing. Specifically the fat screw part that secures the brass bushing of the stroke rod to the drive wheel. I use 90-weight wheel bearing grease, just a little dab will do. Just carefully remove the fat pushrod retaining screw with a large screwdriver, and grease up the inside of the brass pushrod bearing.

There is an electronic adjustment for minimum and maximum speed ranges set at the factory that probably does not normally need readjustment. These are located on the main power controller board, the electronic circuit where the A/C power from the wall plug is converted into the high DC voltage that actually drives the gear head motor at variable speeds. Unless you are an electrical engineer, you probably do not want to mess with the electronic speed control board. They are located at the top of the electronic control board. Be warned (yet again because I cannot say this enough!) There are dangerous voltages here and unless you really know what you are doing, you should never power up the Venus 2000 with the cover off!

08/04