Homebuilt ROVs Forum

I've added a couple of more posts to my blog.

http://martin-wareham.blogspot.co.uk/

Martin

Nicely made thrusters Martinw
How do you purge the air from them? does it just blow out round the shaft seal?
I'm thinking of oil filling mine through the cable but dont want to drill into them to fit a purge valve.

Hi BBB,

Thank you, it's a slow but very rewarding process.

My intention is to have an oil reservoir (box and compensator) with my batteries, battery management/charging and power control PCB and termination (gland) for my tether at the highest point in the ROV and connect the tubes, containing the wires to the thrusters, to it. If I fill from the highest point most of the air should bubble out with possibly a bit of gentle shaking.

The purge valve would be nice to have but they're normally quite big and it's another leak path, I'll see how I get on with the simpler solution first.

Martin

A bit more progress today

http://martin-wareham.blogspot.co.uk/

Martin

Cool, keep up the good work. I really like your control scheme, with each device being "smart".

Thank you, distributed processing (smarts) really does make a lot of sense, because as you add smart things to the design they bring processing power and capability along with them, instead of draining the resources of a central processing entity.

I now have a stable thruster design which I'm very happy with, firstly I need to pressure test it, although it shouldn't be a problem as it's pressure compensated and then I just need to investigate the best way of producing more of them, as it is quite time consuming.

Maybe if I get quicker on my CNC machine and lathe it may speed things up. I have thought about 3D printing but the surface finish is not really good enough to seal o-rings, so would probably require some machining afterwards ....

Martin