First time questions regarding thrusters
Posted: Dec 22nd, 2012, 2:18 am
Hey all, first time poster here, so I've been researching ROVs for about a month now and decided I should first work on getting a good thruster setup, at the moment I have a non waterproofed brushed DC motor with a 40mm prop, and it puts out about 3/4 lb of thrust @ 2.5A. My questions are...
-Is there any real benefit in waterproofing these DC motors? I don't plan on ever running this in salt water, and from what I read on other threads the main benefit of waterproofing is to keep the motor running in a less viscous fluid to keep the current down, but the friction from a shaft seal seems like it would be just as bad as running it directly in water.
-Is 3/4 lb of thrust enough to sufficiently maneuver a ROV? I plan on either using a 50' or a 100' tether so I expect the thrust to only be about 1/2 lb... this is kind of a subjective question so to phrase it better how long would it take for a ROV to dive to 50' using only one thruster at 1/2 lb of thrust?
-Is there any real benefit in waterproofing these DC motors? I don't plan on ever running this in salt water, and from what I read on other threads the main benefit of waterproofing is to keep the motor running in a less viscous fluid to keep the current down, but the friction from a shaft seal seems like it would be just as bad as running it directly in water.
-Is 3/4 lb of thrust enough to sufficiently maneuver a ROV? I plan on either using a 50' or a 100' tether so I expect the thrust to only be about 1/2 lb... this is kind of a subjective question so to phrase it better how long would it take for a ROV to dive to 50' using only one thruster at 1/2 lb of thrust?