Hi all
It has been a long process to get here but I have finally designed a market ready ROV that I am happy with. It gas been machined from solid alloy blocks and designed to carry a range of tools I have developed for various roles in the deep. The raised and tapped ridges of the main body are where the tools mount. I kept the body as sleek and streamlined as possible to minimise drag and current susceptibility and also for tight spot access for example on ice cap surveys where they use a 30 cm drill.
The flare in both ends of the body reflects the fact that the flanges of the bow and stern sections are tapered with different size o rings and is designed so that the o rings are only truly compressed in the last 6 mm or so and allows those sections to spring out slightly when the two bolts are undone… makes battery changing etc so much easier with wet hands. It has a mid section rib reinforcing 3 mm tube wall thickness with the caps being 6 mm.
18 Likes
Congrats John, looks amazing, best looking miniROV design around, the attention to detail is phenomenal. Does it need ballast or buoyancy, or is the unit ready to dive in that configuration?
Hi there Marcus
glad you like it, I am ecstatic at the end result, the factory did an absolutely flawless job of machining the design. Years and years of R&D distilled into this one.
the unit needs about 3-4 x 200 gram weights to get to neutrally bouyant. That is with a Multi-star 20,000 mah battery. It should accomodate a Turnigy 20,000 mah as well even though they are a bit heavier. I have made it capable of that for people in countries where getting a BR battery sent with high shipping costs against devalued local currencies (such as ours!) makes them seriously expensive.
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Very nice. Well done.
Thanks for that Etienne. I have been admirer of your work for quite some time. I would love to have the knowledge of the electronics side that you clearly have. Keep up the good work.
kind regards
John Griffiths
Wow, @johng, what a beautiful little vehicle! I can’t wait to see this guy in action. Any initial expeditions lined up?
hi Elisa
Thanks for that! Like almost everybody, we are lock down so not getting out there and playing with this thing yet. I can’t wait to see it in the water. I will certainly be posting videos when that happens. When I am happy that it perform as expected, I will be making the hulls available and users can fit them out with all the BR components.
cheers
John
3 Likes
John,
great desing, it looks like a simplistic version of a complex equipment.
Can you elaborate more on the testing you have done?
how much current can you handle? is this more hydrodinamic compare Blue ROV2?
Any place to get quote from?
my email luis.chavez@24marine.com
regards
Luis
Hi Luis
Thanks for your compliment and interest in the design. There has been a lot of thought and mistakes learnt from generations of prototypes to get here.
I will email you shortly to run through the details of my unit in more depth.
cheers
John
Wow! What an amazing ROV! I also built my own ROV and I can see the amount of thinking and work you put in this machine! You raised the bar!
One question: where is the Ethernet connection port? More pictures please!!!
Hi
Thanks! Having built your own ROV, you would understand just how much thinking goes into getting the balance of desired functionality, strength and form factor . I guess I spent maybe 2000 hours thinking, designing and testing. Being a novice to CAD meant that a component of that time was spent learning how to achieve what I wanted in the program.
I will be posting more pics of how I have got the electronics set up in the next few days so you can see what connects to what.
John
2 Likes
John, you are my hero !!!
Awsom construction, really really cool !!!
can you please email me with your contact details ?
bluetech2@web.de
Thank you
Johnson
1 Like
Hi Johnson
Good to hear from you and happy you like the design. I have sent you an email link so you can fire away with any questions.
cheers
John
Absolutely amazing job, mate! Looks incredible and we can’t wait to learn more about what it can do.
Cheers
Ian
hey there Ian
Thanks mate. Much appreciated! Yeah, finally I have got what I wanted. Been staring at it for week fully assembled and I cannot find a single thing about I would want to change. Being incessantly hyoer-critical of my previous iterations, that is saying something.
Now what are we going to attach to it to crush those urchin barrens in your next of the woods? My prototype spiked urchin roller in the pic? The protruding arms at the back are to attach weight to to make for good shell penetration. The spiky discs pivot up and down from the drawbar so it can ride over undulating terrain. Might work.
2 Likes
Looks good, nice job.
But don’t you think that without a frame protecting the thrusters, they will damage very soon? For example when you accidentally hit something solid?
Yes, you are right that the thrusters being exposed like that makes them vulnerable to be being damaged if the ROV was thrown against something hard at speed. I do normally put a frame on them (as you can see from photos of previous versions in the forums) made from 3mm thick alloy but at the moment I am also designing machined aluminium thruster housings and haven’t decided which direction I will go in. Perhaps I will wait until the revised version of the M2OO is released to see if that is a suitable motor for a thruster in a custom housing.
I would be more concern about tether traps . maybe a small exoskeleton?
Do you mean snagging the tether on something? I am guessing you mean by an exoskeleton a guard that goes entirely around the ROV including the stern section. I am open to any sort of design ideas that improve the functionality and I do have quite a bit of positive buoyancy with a BR battery on board so I am not averse to adding the weight that would come with external crash bumpers of some sort.
I mean, when flying the ROV, its very easy to snap the tether on the ROV itself.