We are excited to announce the release of a number of new products today! In addition to thrusters, there are a whole lot of other things you’ll need to get your underwater creation in the water.
Subsea Buoyancy Foam
Need something to help your ROV float? This Subsea Buoyancy Foam is just what you’re looking for! Comes in four sizes.
The Subsea Buoyancy Foam is a machinable, hydrostatic pressure-resistant foam that provides buoyancy underwater (to depths of 300 ft, uncoated or 600 ft coated). Its closed-cell structure is engineered to resist penetration by water. Due to its pressure resistance to many fluids and resins, it is also used in resin-transfer molding as a core material. The foam semi-submersible foam is optimal for shallow to mid-water underwater robotics applications.
Here are a few examples of ROVs that use buoyancy foam for stability and floatation:
Cable Penetrators and Silicone Grease
We also now have Cable Penetrators and Silicone Grease for your water-tight enclosures.
It’s been too long since we sent an update! We’ve got a lot to share, both good and bad! There have been a few delays to the T200s and BlueESCs but we’ve got everything back on track and we have a clear path forward. Those of you who haven’t received your rewards have been incredibly patient and we really appreciate it!
New Team Members
First, of all, please welcome Elisa and Adam to our team! They’ve joined us at our new office in Torrance, California and they’re dedicated to making sure that our production goes smoothly from here on out. In the few weeks they’ve been working we’ve already had a big jump in production output.
T200 Thruster
Production-grade T200 Thruster!
Let’s start with the good news: we have production parts of every piece for the T200 Thruster and we have final performance information and charts! The bad news: we only have enough parts for 10 thrusters at the moment and that won’t be resolved for about 2.5 weeks. We’ve spent a lot of extra time with our plastic injection molder and our motor stator winder to get everything just right, but that’s pushed things back a bit.
As soon as we have those parts in hand we should be able to get all pending T200 orders filled within about 5-6 weeks. That means most T200s will be shipped between June 23rd and the end of July.
We’ve added a bunch of technical information on the T200 documentation page including detailed performance charts. The important parts are that the maximum thrust is a whopping 11.2 lbf at 16V and maximum power is around 350 W. Here’s the thrust vs. throttle input:
Here is another image of the T200 with all production parts.
T200 Thruster – Shipping soon.
BlueESCs and Software
We are caught up with production of plain T100s and new orders have a pretty short lead time. However, we’re still behind and catching up on T100s and T200s with BlueESCs. Now that we’ve got a few new people in the office we’ll be able to get these out faster. We’re currently expecting most T100s with BlueESCs to be shipped by the early July. T200s with BlueESCs will follow by the end of July
We do have a big update for the BlueESC: we have completed the I2C modification to the firmware so you can now update throttle via I2C and receive sensor data via I2C. You get the following data through I2C:
We have a few exciting updates about the BlueESC, T200, and BlueROV, all of which will ship soon (finally!). We appreciate your patience as we learn and grow and make our products the best they can be.
News
You may have already read the article on our website, but we have some exciting testing news about the T100 and T200 Thrusters! The folks over at Woods Holes Oceanographic Institution recently performed a static pressure test of the T100 Thrusters. We’re proud to report that they survived at 3000m depth (4500 psi) with no damage or changes in performance! Check out the full article and pictures here.
Last, we are moving! It’s finally time to upgrade from our tiny space to something that we can grow into. We’ll be moving ten minutes south into Torrance, California. Once we get moved in, we’ll share pictures!
BlueESC
The BlueESC is now in early production and we will ship around 50-100 units in April. Below is a picture of the first six that we built.
They generously offered to test a few of our thrusters in their test chambers, which are capable of simulating depths of over 11,000 meters, the depth of “Challenger Deep” in the Marianas Trench. We sent them a few thrusters from our second production batch – serial numbers 151, 152, and 153. They recently completed a static depth test. We compared performance and inspected the thrusters before and after the test to see if there were any effects from the pressure.
We’re proud to say that the thrusters did great and showed no signed of degradation or damage after being tested to a depth of 3000 meters – almost two miles underwater!
We want to share the test process and results with you.
The Test
The images below show the test chamber. It’s capable of simulating pressures at 11,000 meter depths where the pressure is more than 1000 times what it is at the surface. The thrusters were put into a mesh bag inside the chamber and then a heavy lid was lowered into place and secured by a screw-on top, seen on the right.
We have a new product available today. It’s a propeller specially designed for the M100 Motor. There are lots of applications where you don’t want or need a full blown thruster, like on small ROVs or surface vessels. Together with our OpenROV Mounting Hardware, this propeller could be used for the forward thrusters on the OpenROV.
The propeller has a 68mm diameter and generates about 3.2 lb of forward thrust and 2.6 lb of reverse thrust. There are clockwise and counter-clockwise rotating versions. Thanks to the magic of 3D printing, we can build these in small batches without the need for expensive injection molded tooling. We are selling the propellers here for your convenience, but many of you have your own 3D printers and can print the propellers yourself. We are making the 3D files for the propeller open-source and licensed under CC-NC-SA 4.0.
The 3D files are available here for free (and also on GrabCAD).
Here is a chart of the propeller’s performance on the M100 Motor. Note that our propellers are printed using the SLS method, but you might get slightly different results with other types of 3D printers.
We’re happy to report that we have ordered the first production run of assembled PCBs for the BlueESC. We’ve been testing our production prototypes and we’re really happy with the results! The waterproof and water-cooling aspects of the ESC are truly unique and advantageous.
Here’s an image of the production prototype, completely waterproofed and protected in its aluminum enclosure.
The BlueESC production prototype. The ESC is protected in thermally conductive potting compound.
This update won’t be long because we made a short video to show the BlueESC prototype in action! The BlueESC is living up to all of the specifications that we promised and more. Besides being waterproof and water-cooled, it has temperature, voltage, rpm, and current sensors onboard. In terms of performance, it can handle up to 20V and 25 amps in air. In water, it stays ice cold, even at 25 amps. We haven’t had a chance to test the limits in water yet, but we can guarantee that it will be much higher than that required for the T100 or T200 thrusters.
It’s been a while since we sent out an update, but we’ve gotten a lot done! We’ve shipped almost 450 T100 Thrusters so far and we’ve shipped out all standard OpenROV Compatible Kits! We haven’t revealed a whole lot about the OpenROV Kit, so most of this update will describe that. Upcoming in the next week or two, we will have reports on the BlueESC and T200 Thruster as well as some very exciting depth testing results.
OpenROV Compatible Kit
Here’s what comes with each kit:
2 x T100 Thrusters (standard)
1 x M100 Motor (vertical thruster)
1 x M100 Propeller
1 x OpenROV Mounting Hardware Kit
You already know what the T100 Thrusters look like. Here’s what the M100, propeller, and mounting hardware kit look like:
The propeller is 3D printed in polished black plastic and designed to fit the OpenROV vertical thruster position. It uses a similar blade profile and shape as the T100 Propeller. It’s designed for efficient thrust in both directions, which is particularly important on the OpenROV.
We hope that you are having a wonderful holiday season! We wanted to give you a status update on the project and let you know what’s coming in 2015!
Thruster Shipping
We have made significant progress on orders of T100 Thrusters. We sent out a big shipment last week as well as two weeks before. To date, we’ve shipped 285 thrusters and fulfilled orders for 106 Kickstarter backers! Despite that, we’ve fallen a little behind our original schedule. We’re planning to pick up the pace in 2015, especially as we launch the BlueESC and T200.
Just so you know, when your order is shipped, we’ll send you a message via Kickstarter.
Packages of T100 Thrusters sent last week.
OpenROV Compatible Kits
The OpenROV Compatible Kits will be shipping in mid-January. We we’re hoping to get them out the door in December, but we chose to spend a little more time optimizing the propeller design for the vertical thruster. The propeller is custom designed and 3d printed for the M100 Motor and the OpenROV kit.
A number of thrusters shipped last week have been delivered and they are officially all over the world!
We’ve got some very exciting news for you in this update! We are introducing our online support forums and a new product: the M100 motor!
Forums
We’ve been getting a lot of questions over the last few months and now that we’ve shipped quite a few thrusters, we want to introduce you to our support forums.
The forums are a place to ask questions about our products and to discuss applications. We want to keep this as simple and helpful as possible.
Please sign up for a forum account here! If you’ve purchased through our online store, you may already have an account. Once you’re signed up, you’ll be able to ask questions and respond to others. Note that the forums are still in beta and there may be bugs but we’ll make sure to address them quickly. Please report any issues.
The M100
If you are an OpenROV Compatible Kit backer, I’m sure you’re still wondering what the “modified T100 thruster” for the vertical thruster looks like. Well, here it is: the M100 Brushless Motor.
The M100! Note that on the real motor, the motor shaft extends 10mm out of the motor to attach prop adapters and other hardware.
The M100 is a simple brushless motor version of the T100. It uses the same internal components but uses a metal base that has standard brushless motor mounting holes. Its propeller (not shown) is a bit smaller to fit in the size constraints of the OpenROV.
Dimensional drawing of the M100 motor.
What else can it be used for?
Even if you don’t have an OpenROV, this is a really cool product. You could use it to make an underwater actuator, camera gimbal, even your own thruster! For instance, if you want to build a thruster into the frame of your vehicle, you can use the M100 to get the same performance as the T100 without all the extra plastic.
When will it be available?
We’ve added the M100 to our online store, but we won’t be taking any orders for it until most of the Kickstarter rewards have been fulfilled. Check out the item on our store here.
We’ll have an “M200” as well in the future. We’ll also be selling a propeller specifically for the M100 as well as the T100 propellers, which fit great on the M100.
Details
Here’s the specs:
Voltage: 6-16V
Max Current: 12.5 A
Max Power: 135 W
RPM/V with no load (Kv): 540 rpm/V
Shaft diameter: 4mm
Shaft length: 10mm
Connections: 3 copper pads (soldering and waterproofing required)
This is one of coolest parts: solder pads on the motor instead of loose wires. This allows you to solder wires directly to the motor and then seal them with potting compound or liquid tape. No need for waterproof wire splices or underwater connectors!
Solder pads for wire connections makes the motor easy to waterproof.
That’s all for now! Have a great week and Happy Thanksgiving to those in the US. We’ll have more updates for you soon!
It’s been a while since we’ve sent out an email but a lot has happened – enough for several updates, so will try to send a few over the next few days. Everything is going great! Let’s start with the coolest news.
We are shipping the first 100 thrusters this week! Some have been shipped already and the rest will be in the mail by Friday. The shipments are mostly going to early-bird thruster backers as well as a few people who needed their thrusters as soon as possible.
Building 100 thrusters in a single batch is a big milestone for us and we want to share what was involved.
As you may remember, all of the thruster’s parts are custom, and we order them from all over the world. We still have to do a lot of work here in Redondo Beach to get the thrusters ready to ship.
First, here’s some of the “raw” materials as they arrive to us.
Some raw parts. Don’t be fooled by the small boxes. We have *18 boxes* of nozzles like the one at top left.
It’s amazing how much stuff we need to build all of the thrusters that you guys backed. We are literally up to the ceiling in boxes full of injection molded plastic parts. We have 1,000 cardboard tubes to package the thrusters in. We have 21,000 screws as well as thousands of other components including aluminum shaft collars, steel flux rings, and stainless steel motor shafts.
Wound and sealed motor stators.
The motor stators are wound and waterproofed elsewhere, fortunately, but we still do some extensive testing here to make sure that they are in great shape. Every stator spends at least three days in ocean water after which it is inspected for any signs of corrosion. Our supplier does a great job and the first batch had a 100% success rate.
We’ve been working hard the last few days to make sure that we could ship thrusters this week. Here are some pictures during the production process. We’re going to go into more detail about the tools and processes in a future post, so we’ll just show pictures of the in-process subassemblies here.
Stator bases while installing PCBs (left) and after stators and cables have been installed and sealed (right). The ends of the cables are sealed into the sealant so that water cannot leak through the cable and into your vehicle.
Here are the assembled and coated rotor assemblies. They consist of a steel flex ring road or base stainless steel motor shaft, and 12 custom arc magnets. They are coded in a tough protective coating that resists both abrasion and water.
Here are the motor cables, with the ends stripped and ready to be attached to the thrusters. The cable is a tough urethane jacketed cable that can handle abrasion and is very water resistant.
The Result
Here’s a pile of finished thrusters. Have you ever seen so many thrusters in one place??
Finished thrusters!
Each thruster is carefully packaged into a cardboard tube that protects it during shipping. The cardboard tubes are shipped in rectangular boxes for extra protection.
Each thruster is individually serialized and labeled. Here’s thruster #0001:
Each thruster comes in a protective tube and includes a counter-rotating propeller and mounting bracket.
Here’s all of the thruster tubes that are shipping this week!
Packed thrusters ready to go!
That’s all for now. Some of you will be receiving thrusters next week!
We’ll follow up with some more updates in the very near future. We’re going to cover the manufacturing process and tools, updates on OpenROV and BlueROV, and then talk about documentation, forums, and user contribution!
Things will be a little slow here during next week (Thanksgiving in the US), but we are expecting to ship the next batch by December 12th. If all goes well, we plan to have all T100s that were ordered without BlueESCs to be shipped in December. That will also include the OpenROV kits. We’re hoping to ship BlueROVs by early January.
If you have any questions/comments/concerns, please feel free to email us at info@bluerobotics.com.
The forums are a place to ask questions about our products and to discuss applications. We want to keep this as simple and helpful as possible.
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