We purchased T200 thrusters awhile back with the black potted feedthroughs. Now one of the potted feedthroughs is leaking through the potting material. It is close to the edge, but not exactly at the edge. It appears as a pinhole leak. Is this a common occurrence with time? Is there a particular life expectancy for the potting compound on the feedthroughs? These have been rarely used (less than 10 hours total), and have been stored indoors.
Bruce
Oh I now see this is a common problem from other threads on the site.
Hi Bruce, out of interest is the potting material failing inside the thruster or in the penetrators?
By feedthroughs are you talking about the penetrators going into the ROV housing?
Yes it’s the potting material in the penetrators going into the enclosure. We caught it before the enclosure filled with too much water, and luckily no electronics shorted. After I posted, I saw several similar threads from a few years ago and it appears this is a known issue (I should have searched first…).
We have Blue Trail Engineering’s feedthroughs for the T200s on our other two vehicles so it looks like it’s time upgrade our first vehicle.
Hi @bruce -
It is possible to upgrade your older potted penetrators with Wetlink Penetrators - check out this forum thread!
Thanks for the thread reference. I’ve always want to ask how the Wetlink penetrators handle nicks in the sheathing. I’d hate to trade one problem for another as our electronics are pretty expensive. The Blue Trails Engineering Cobalt connectors are definitely a little pricy compared to your Wetlink versions. I’d be curious to know if you’ve had any reported flooding events from the user base using your new connectors, and if so, were those caused by failures in the sheathing or some other issue?
Hi Bruce -
A cable nick could cause a leak with a WetLink Penetrator, you’re correct. Unless at extreme depth, this leak is likely to be slow enough that the leak sensors would detect it and no major damage may occur. That said, I’ve yet to ever “nick” a cable in almost 10 years of piloting ROVs - the T200 thruster cables are minimally exposed in the BlueROV2 - maybe others have encountered this as a larger risk?
Hi @bruce,
We have had a nick in a thruster cable jacket recently, but it didn’t cause flooding through a wetlink penetrator (but it certainly could have - we were in shallow water and repaired it with a repair kit).
It was likely our fault for not properly cable managing after disassembly and reassembly of a thruster to remove metallic sediment.
Waterblocked connectors should eliminate any likelihood of the flooded bottle consequence.
Worth noting that the cobalt connectors are water blocked, but cobalt simple penetrators are not.
I think you mean penetrators here again. My understanding is connectors are easily detachable, penetrators are not.
Also, there are rumours of new blue robotics connectors coming out soon but I don’t know anything about them. If you already have cobalt connections on your other ROVs I’d imagine it would make more sense to stick with those for sparing purposes.
Hi Bruce,
I have build 3 Homemade ROV with the bluetrail cobalt connector.
the Bulkhead have never failed me, this with intense utilisation, diving more than 200 days per year.
Your electronic is safe with these, they are worth the price in my opinion, and make the maintenance a lot more easier from the fact that you can completely unmount the POD from the ROV, without all the thrusters, sonar or others.
The wetlink penetrator are working very well, but the water still can go threw the cable and get inside the POD.
regards
BooD,
You use the BlueTrail connectors for all of your thrusters and lights and everything? That’s a neat idea…