Aluminum Hull with Dome

[orangeltr456]

I needed a way to seal all my electronics and provide a viewing area for a pan tilt camera. I have not built it yet, But I should be starting in in the next few weeks.


Maybe it will help someone else. Drawing available upon request!

[orangeltr456]

SO.. I found out it would cost about $900 from the machine shop. Not in my budget. SO I am thinking 6'' pvc with a threaded enc cap on one end and a solid one on the other. with a small water pump feeding cool water from out side to a power steering cooler that is mounted in the top of pvc. the motor controllers I am using already have fans so air would circulate in the tube, hopefully keeping everything cool.
Any foreseeable problems?

http://www.aliexpress.com/item/12V-Mini ... 55097.html

http://www.jegs.com/i/Derale/259/13200/ ... 4AodgBEAKA

[scubersteve]

Just how much heat are you expecting to generate?
I haven't seen anyone include a water cooling system like that. I wouldn't have thought it was necessary.

[orangeltr456]

I am not 100% sure that it is nessisary, I will have 4 vex victor 888 motor controllers and each will have about 15 amps running through it . It may not need it but with the controllers having fans on them I assume they create a fairly large about of heat . In addition to voltage regulators for micro controllers and camera.

[Zaibach]

I've been a bit concerned about heat buildup too.
The water around the ROV should act as a great heatsink but the PVC is going to act like an insulator. I did notice when I was looking at PVC parts at my local hardware store that they had metal end caps for their PVC cleanouts. Which could possibly act as awesome heatsinks without needing to drill additional holes. Tho the concern there being that the temp difference might lead to a condensation issue. So I'm still tossing that around as a possibility along with the idea of adding some simple dehumidification.

I also toyed around with the idea of submersing my electronics in vegetable oil but the camera is going to be in the same compartment, plus the connectors to other external compartments makes that problematic.

As far as a dome I haven't ordered one yet but I was able to find a cheap PVC union online for ~$22. I say cheap because when I asked if they had a 3" PVC union they guy looked a little strange and said they didn't think they carried them in that size but if they did it would probably be about a hundred dollars. Hoping that turns ends up fitting the bill I'm a little concerned the base is ~1/2" but I thought it would have more of a lip than it does ~4mm. It does come with a built in gasket. I also still need to measure it in a few places so I can submit those for a dome quote. I'm keeping my fingers crossed that it turns out OK.

[rossrov]

Food for thought. We got a bit off-topic in this viewtopic.php?f=3&t=1069&start=20#p5681 thread with some discussion on heatsinking. You don't need alot of metal surface area in the water, water being a much better conductor of heat than air. The "thermal path" to the water is what you should be concerned about. Earlier in that thread mention is made of heatsink paste - important if you find ESCs getting too hot. The brackets etc in the pics are more for mounting the ESCs than heatsinking, but give considerable heatsinking effect as a bonus. Ignore the threaded PVC end caps - all I had available. OK as long as you're not going deep, but a bugger to unscrew and hard to know if the sealing washer is located properly.

[Squidwood]

Hi, what size is the tube? This is the same as what I have in mind, I'm just struggling with sizes.

I have a tube 100mm diameter by 300mm long, I also have a clear dome 140mm diameter including
A lip/flange but the actual dome is 100mm diameter.

I plan on welding two ends to make a flange on the tube to fit my dome and a back plate.

Cheers David