My ROV
Posted: Dec 15th, 2013, 8:26 am
I've gotten quite far on my ROV project and have received so much help from others on here I will try as best I can to document my build, so that it may hopefully help others.
My story starts with buying drop cameras to use on my boat, the main purpose was to help me to interpret the information that was displaying on my echo sounder screen. In my experience whenever a bottom feature came up on the echo sounder, there would be as many opinions as to what it was as there were people on the boat.
The first Camera, a rotating one was ok, but it leaked and it was hard to get the boat anchored in the exact right spot so that I could view the lump or ledge.
The second camera a bullet camera, just never pointed the right way......
Anyways, I bought some plans for an ROV from ebay, it was a University project and looked like this
I got all excited and ordered bildge pump motors and controllers. But as i researched it all a bit more and read just about all of the post 2010 part of this forum, I decided to go with brushless motors. I also really liked the simplicity of the single hull that Biker Bones has documented on this forum.
My new design is now based on the sea lion or sea otter ROV.
My basic hull is a 460mm (17ish ") long piece of water bore casing with an ID of 127mm (5"). The length is 460 due to the limitations of my lathe and I wanted room for expansion (380 would have done) The diameter is 5" because 100mm (4") was not big enough to fit all my electronics and batteries (6x 5000ma 3s packs) confortably, and bore casing because it was the only pipe type that I could find in that diameter, with the added bonus that bore casing is designed to withstand the pressure applied from the outside... apparently
I trimmed the pipe to size and skimmed it's entire length, I wouldn't bother with skimming it next time.
I then rebated the ends so as to reduce the OD by 1mm to provide a shoulder for the flange to sit against.
Using a CNC router I machined some flanges out of 10mm PVC flat sheet and glued them to each end using standard pipe glue and primer, primer everywhere!
The ends of the pipe and flanges where then machined flat on the lathe.
The front cap was cut from a sheet of 12.7mm (0.5") polycarbonate, a small shoulder was machined into it so 4mm sat inside the pipe, and a o-ring groove to coincide with pipe surface was also cut.
More to come![Smile :)](./images/smilies/icon_e_smile.gif)
My story starts with buying drop cameras to use on my boat, the main purpose was to help me to interpret the information that was displaying on my echo sounder screen. In my experience whenever a bottom feature came up on the echo sounder, there would be as many opinions as to what it was as there were people on the boat.
The first Camera, a rotating one was ok, but it leaked and it was hard to get the boat anchored in the exact right spot so that I could view the lump or ledge.
The second camera a bullet camera, just never pointed the right way......
Anyways, I bought some plans for an ROV from ebay, it was a University project and looked like this
I got all excited and ordered bildge pump motors and controllers. But as i researched it all a bit more and read just about all of the post 2010 part of this forum, I decided to go with brushless motors. I also really liked the simplicity of the single hull that Biker Bones has documented on this forum.
My new design is now based on the sea lion or sea otter ROV.
My basic hull is a 460mm (17ish ") long piece of water bore casing with an ID of 127mm (5"). The length is 460 due to the limitations of my lathe and I wanted room for expansion (380 would have done) The diameter is 5" because 100mm (4") was not big enough to fit all my electronics and batteries (6x 5000ma 3s packs) confortably, and bore casing because it was the only pipe type that I could find in that diameter, with the added bonus that bore casing is designed to withstand the pressure applied from the outside... apparently
![Confused :?](./images/smilies/icon_e_confused.gif)
I trimmed the pipe to size and skimmed it's entire length, I wouldn't bother with skimming it next time.
I then rebated the ends so as to reduce the OD by 1mm to provide a shoulder for the flange to sit against.
Using a CNC router I machined some flanges out of 10mm PVC flat sheet and glued them to each end using standard pipe glue and primer, primer everywhere!
The ends of the pipe and flanges where then machined flat on the lathe.
The front cap was cut from a sheet of 12.7mm (0.5") polycarbonate, a small shoulder was machined into it so 4mm sat inside the pipe, and a o-ring groove to coincide with pipe surface was also cut.
More to come
![Smile :)](./images/smilies/icon_e_smile.gif)