Dive gear!
Posted: Mon Dec 23, 2013 7:36 pm
I'm a keen diver and tinkerer and have made plenty of my own gear using traditional machining gear but have been intrigued about the possibilities offered by a 3d printer in the underwater world.
This weekend just gone, I finally managed to graduate from the calibration cube and start printing useful stuff.
First up - block-off plugs for my rebreather loop. Part of the pre-dive assembly checklist on these things is a negative pressure test. We introduce (with lung power) a light vacuum to the breathing loop and walk away for a while, coming back to ensure the vacuum is still there. If not? There's a leak somewhere. I had such a leak and wanted to isolate it, so made these plugs which let me disconnect the hoses at various points, block them off, negative check that part of the loop and eventually isolate the problem.
The plugs with o-rings installed:
[img]http://www.simonlockwood.net/linky/3dp/loopplugs.jpg[/img]
and installed on the front half of the loop
[img]http://www.simonlockwood.net/linky/3dp/ ... gsinst.jpg[/img]
They were too porous between the layers and would not hold a vacuum at first. The white flash on them is the result of me taking to the surface with a small artist's brush loaded to the gills with acetone to try and blend the perimeter layers a little more solidly. Looks less than lovely but it works a treat!
Moving on, I bought a cheap second hand strobe which is designed to trigger when it sees the main camera's flash. Using the main camera's flash, however, has some serious image quality issues underwater so the camera case I have doesn't let the light out in front of the camera, rather, it lets it run along an optic fibre.
But I needed to make up some covers over the "eyes" on the strobe which blocked one off completely and, on the other, blocked it off but let the fibre through to illuminate the eye when the flash went off. It also had to hold the fibre in place.
[img]http://www.simonlockwood.net/linky/3dp/fibreport.jpg[/img]
And installed
[img]http://www.simonlockwood.net/linky/3dp/ ... rtinst.jpg[/img]
The supports worked really well on the pressure plugs but not so well under the curved base of the fibre adapters - lots of saggy string under there. Still, a quick paint job and acetone finish up had it in workable order and the flash is now firing correctly.
Can't wait to get in the water and try this one out!
This weekend just gone, I finally managed to graduate from the calibration cube and start printing useful stuff.
First up - block-off plugs for my rebreather loop. Part of the pre-dive assembly checklist on these things is a negative pressure test. We introduce (with lung power) a light vacuum to the breathing loop and walk away for a while, coming back to ensure the vacuum is still there. If not? There's a leak somewhere. I had such a leak and wanted to isolate it, so made these plugs which let me disconnect the hoses at various points, block them off, negative check that part of the loop and eventually isolate the problem.
The plugs with o-rings installed:
[img]http://www.simonlockwood.net/linky/3dp/loopplugs.jpg[/img]
and installed on the front half of the loop
[img]http://www.simonlockwood.net/linky/3dp/ ... gsinst.jpg[/img]
They were too porous between the layers and would not hold a vacuum at first. The white flash on them is the result of me taking to the surface with a small artist's brush loaded to the gills with acetone to try and blend the perimeter layers a little more solidly. Looks less than lovely but it works a treat!
Moving on, I bought a cheap second hand strobe which is designed to trigger when it sees the main camera's flash. Using the main camera's flash, however, has some serious image quality issues underwater so the camera case I have doesn't let the light out in front of the camera, rather, it lets it run along an optic fibre.
But I needed to make up some covers over the "eyes" on the strobe which blocked one off completely and, on the other, blocked it off but let the fibre through to illuminate the eye when the flash went off. It also had to hold the fibre in place.
[img]http://www.simonlockwood.net/linky/3dp/fibreport.jpg[/img]
And installed
[img]http://www.simonlockwood.net/linky/3dp/ ... rtinst.jpg[/img]
The supports worked really well on the pressure plugs but not so well under the curved base of the fibre adapters - lots of saggy string under there. Still, a quick paint job and acetone finish up had it in workable order and the flash is now firing correctly.
Can't wait to get in the water and try this one out!
I think you may want to chat with cope413, or maybe he will chime in. He has shared a link:
I think making our parts stronger and in your case airtight/waterproof/chemically resistant are all properties we seek in parts 
I was thinking more in terms of structural parts that require some strength and toughness in heavy use. What really intrigues me is the ability we are getting to in terms of hybridizing materials. I'm not there yet, but I think multi-extrusion is going to allow some interesting material design 
Keep those awesome parts coming