Hey there, friends! We are deeply excited to announce today’s new product: aluminum tubes for the 3″ Series and 4″ Series Watertight Enclosures. These aluminum tubes have significantly greater depth ratings, better heat transfer to the water, and a hard anodized black finish. Both tubes are bored out from the inside for optimal wall thickness and to reduce the enclosure weight. The 3″ Series tube is rated for 500 meters (1640 ft) and the 4″ Series is rated for 400 meters (1312 ft).
Both tubes are available now (in fairly limited quantity initially) separately and as options in the watertight enclosure configuration pages.
Please note that the 3″ Series tube is 8.75″ long, just like the battery tube on the BlueROV2. Both of these tubes are drop in replacements for the enclosure tubes on the BlueROV2. We’ll get into more details on that once we’ve done more testing at depth!
2D drawing showed the bored out inside diameter to decrease weight and optimize depth rating.
As you may have seen on our social media, we have a new pressure test chamber, the #Crushinator!! The Crushinator will be able to reach pressures equivalent to 1000 meters underwater and will take our products to a whole new level of performance, reliability, and integrity. It can fit an entire BlueROV2 inside for testing!
Last week, we took a prototype aluminum 3″ Series enclosure to about 750m before imploding. That’s nearly 5 times the depth rating of the clear acrylic enclosure! Check out The Crushinator’s first victim below. RIP.
Yesterday, we took a 4″ Series tube down to 610m before it imploded. Even after crushing, it remained sealed and airtight! Check it out.
The enclosures are derated somewhat to allow for safety margin and variation between different tubes. These tests were all done with aluminum end-caps but we’ll be testing out the acrylic and dome end caps in the future! Onwards and downwards!
If you have any thoughts, please join the related discussion on our forums here!
That’s great news Rusty. What depth are the current thrusters and the foam block rated for on the Blue 2?
Thanks, Todd. The thrusters have been tested fairly deep but we haven’t officially rated them yet. We expect them to work just fine at 500m. The foam blocks on the BlueROV2 are rated to 244m (uncoated), but if coated they can handle 488m. I’m not sure how accurate those rating are - they are from the manufacturer.
If anyone starts diving the BlueROV2 past 100m with these new enclosures, I’ll be really interested to hear how you manage to do it. My limit is about 100m even with the new 400ft anchor rode I put on my boat. I’m about maxed out for position keeping unless someone has some sort of dynamic positioning.
Huh, neat. Are you planning a higher depth rated camera portal window too? Something that can match those for depth?
Also if someone were to send you a 3d printed side plate part to test in the crusher, would you have any interest in doing so?