White Substance on 2" Enclosure Acrylic End Cap

We are assembling a custom AUV for use in research at a University using, in part, components from BlueRobotics, including the 2" Enclosures, in which we have our cameras. We’ve recently noticed a strange white ‘substance’ on one of our acrylic end caps (see attached image). To the best of my knowledge we have not used any chemical cleaners on the end cap, and attempting to clean it with a dry or wet (water only) cloth have been unsuccessful.

Has anyone else experienced a similar issue? We’re hoping to try to determine what may have caused it, and how to clean it off (if possible).

Ultimately it’s not a problem if we need to simply replace the end cap, but we would also like to prevent whatever caused this from happening again in the future.

Hi Kalin,

Has it been used in salt water? It’s possible that’s salt residue that’s built up over time. If that is the case it can generally be avoided by rinsing the ROV with fresh water after dives in salty water, but it would need to be cleaned out first to remove the gap between the end cap and the flange that’s there at the moment.

Eliot,

Thank you for your response!
It has not, we are still in the assembly phase, so the vehicle has yet to be submerged.

Looking at it again, is the acrylic cracked? Possibly the bolts were tightened too much, or it’s had some excessive vibrations or impact.

It’s hard to tell from a single photo from the outside. I’d suggest you take off the end cap and see what it’s like on the inside, and whether the acrylic is damaged or if it’s a buildup of some kind.