BlueRov 2 Life span

Blue Robotics Software
1

Greetings

Opening a discussion here.

What would you say is the average lifespan of a BlueRov 2?
I know there are a million and 1 factors to consider, but in your experience as users, how many hours have you logged before some error, minor or critical, occurred?

I have 4 BlueRov2 and have logged about 700 hours of use for them in about 1600 immersions, over a year now. And the problems start to pile up around the 150h mark.
Apart from the current problems with the epoxy that has plagued me the last 2 weeks.
Other things like t200 rusting, wear, bearings replacement. Electronics fails from memory failure or gyro blocking… all those little things.

Id say for me and the use i give the ROVs the average life span for them is about 200 hours of use.

What do you guys think, or have experienced?

thanks and stay safe during this pandemic of a time.

2

Hi Kublai,

This is a great question and I guess some do not like to answer in fear on being held accountable I guess.

We need to look at how the ROV is being used to answer this question.

Lets look at some of the variables:

Temperature
Depth
Salinity
Flight Plan

The ROV is rated to operate at certain temperatures. Above or below these temperatures will increase stress to framework and components.

Deeper depths will produce more stress than shallow

Water salinity will affect differently to potting compound and softer materials.

Long, high speed flight will cause fatigue in certain parts of the ROV, compared to short, small adjustments to flight path.

Although this is a basic overview of the problems we have encountered with our ROVs we have always found that a lot of TLC will give them a bit more life.

We always conduct pre and post flight checks, we replace main O-rings every 6 months and penetrator O-rings every 12. Potting compound is inspected before deployment with a strong pull and replaced every 12 months no matter what.

Replacement parts are monitored to observe common failures and we have appropriate numbers available.

We treat our ROVs as a young person; they want to get wet, do things they shouldn’t, don’t listen to instructions and we pay for to keep it safe.

We do have some failures of parts that occur and we try to anticipate these failures but we are never 100% sure of what or when it will happen. Treat is right and have spares available if you can.

For a life span of parts, look at anywhere between 1 hour to 100+ hours. Monitor your variables and see where the failures occur the most depending on these variable, anticipate the worst and have spares in place.

We operate in temps of 0c-45c+, depths of 0.4m- 80m, salinity 1ppm to 10,000ppm and flight plans of observing at 3m 600 minutes to recovery at 80m for 10 minutes.

Happy to share more in depth knowledge if you require. Please let us know what you find and we should share our information on this thread and help others.

Kind regards

Deep Supplies

1 Like
3

…du you use a LOT of freshwater after use?.. like sit them in a waterbath, and turn all moving parts ? …hose down the connectors and all theese parts? …Salt is bad thing :wink:

4

We forgot to add the fresh water rinse after a flight. :stuck_out_tongue: Which Christian has mentioned.

We always rinse in fresh water after any dive. Paying attention to the thrusters.

Kind regards

Deep Supplies