Underwater Tethered Rover

Build
1

Hey guys,

Am been wanting to get a tethered, waterproof rover project going for a while now, and thought I’d see if anyone had any experience with this so far!

Was thinking of using some old, damaged T200 thrusters I have lying around and putting that propeller shaft into a reduction gear box to make it more appropriate for spinning wheels.

For the gear box, I’ve been looking at the range of existing sets that Polulu sells and trying to interface one of these gear boxes with the T200s. Biggest problem with that is that they’re generally metal gears… which ain’t gonna react to water that well. I also imagine that a gear box exposed to the water will seize up within no time at all, so maybe a 3D printed gear box, or an oil filled metal gear box would be better?

Would use high grip rubber wheels or something similar, and make sure the rover was heavy enough such that when it was in water it would actually drive along the submerged surface.

Would love to hear people thoughts!

Cheers,
Jordan

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Hello Jordan,

I am also looking into this problem. I was thinking about using POM Acetal but that is too hard to print 3d…

Cheers,
E.

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Hey Etienne,

Good to hear that someone else out there is looking into the problem!
Will give any updates if I go down the 3D printed gears option. I kinda prefer the kinda of getting a COTS oil filled gearbox and interfacing a Bluerobotics T200 with that… will update if i find anything!

Cheers,
Jordan

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I am now looking to do the exact same thing - building an underwater tethered wheeled vehicle to crawl around the bottom of a swimming pool to position a video camera. I want to use the T200 motors, but I need a gearbox to step down the output of the T200 to drive the wheels. Has anyone cracked this problem yet?