underwater enclosure

[Staples Build Team]

I have been looking for an underwater enclosure and cannot seem to find one. It has to house a whole bunch of electronics on the ROV and have exit holes for wires and whatnot. So preferably plastic. I want to go down about 100' ....150' at the most. What is there that would fit my needs?

Thanks.

[sthone]

If a PVC pipe housing won't fit your needs you can try an otterbox but you have to check the depth rating on them as I'm not sure how deep the can go.

-Steve

[Staples Build Team]

otter box sounds good, but they don't have one big enough. I guess i will bite the bullet and spend a little extra on a pelican case. Although i cant find a depth rating on them... it says waterproof and crush proof but does anyone know how deep you can safely go with them?

[Rover]

As Steve mentioned, PVC tubing is easy to purchase at your local home improvement store and easy to work with.

A really easy approach is to take a 4" PVC pipe coupling, cut a short piece of 4" pipe and glue it in one 1/2 of the pipe coupler. Then either on a lathe or a belt sander sand the end that you glued up as square as you can get it. What you end up with is a .5" thick end cap that you can drill and tap 10-24 machine screws for the end pressure bulkhead....... next do this for the other end.

I use a silicone based rubber for the gasket. It is actually rubber stamp sheeting used to make rubber stamps in a laser engraver..... bonus if you have a laser engraver to cut the gasket out...

This rubber is very flexible and makes a great seal.... It was bought at Laserbits.com....... http://www.laserbits.com/index.php?main ... cts_id=880

As you can see in the two pictures, I constructed both ends and then coupled them together with a piece of pipe cut to the length I needed..... (The rubber gasket.....is the lighter gray between the end bulkhead and the main tube....kinda hard to see in the photo)

TIP: Prior to screwing on the end bulkhead, flat sand the ends of the bulkhead with fine abrasive paper on a flat plate such as a piece of glass of flat piece of marble.... This will make sure the ends are perfectly flat and will mate with the gasket for a waterproof seal.

And yes the 1.5" long 10-24 cap bolts hold really well in the PVC pipe. If you should strip one out, a 10/24 heli-coil works great. (They have enough hold to crush the rubber gasket)


Jim