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Same sentiment wrt blending hardware.

While the panel is a monument of aesthetics and SS, it's a lot of stuff for a simple function. Unless you are operating a north Florida dive shop with submarine cascades, and a pleathora of gas sources and oulets all going simultaneously, a blending panel is overkill. This is especially true while travelling.

When it is broken down, why would one have dedicated and labelled inlets for each gas? It's not as if one is going to be able to afford four whips with bleeds and dedicated connectors when only one can be used at a time anyway. DIN inlet connection makes it painful to switch back and forth. Again, for the money and effort QDs win the day. An expensive metering valve for each gas? Say it ain't so! There is only a need for a single metering valve in any system.

From a strictly monetary point of view, you could have a complete set of whips, a Haskel, QDs, a large LP compressor to run the whole show, and enough money left over for a modest HP compressor with proper filtering and a mixing stick for the cost of the panel.

As far as the general strategy enunciated by others, it is a fact that RBs allow sufficient blending for a week directly from bailout using basic transfilling gear. With LP steel tanks on the Rebreather, and any 3000 PSI alum bailout tank, whether for O2 or diluent, the RB diver has the best of both worlds: simple blending and simple field fills.

This basic reality mandates versatility. If one is able to configure the whips to fit both the booster scenario for garage fills, and the field transfills, there isn't a need for anything else. The most stingent requirement for this is fitting QDs and clever arrangements to enhance versatility.

While several pictures have been shown on this site, it does help to minimize the female QD fittings since they are more expensive. Interestingly, one way to achieve this is to have female QDs on both ends of the whips, and males almost everywhere else. This facilitates many of the objectives involving having lots of fittings to allow connecting from anything to anything. Since the storage bottle will require more fittings, having males on them makes for a cheaper system.

Another place where it is helpful to have valves setup with bleeds in such a way that allows switching cascades, or supply tanks without bleeding the booster. in this way, the booster can be kept at maximum pressure while the gas sources can be changed. The same is true for the field with or without the booster. This is only really useful when staying with the same gas type. If there is a switch from O2 to He, you should bleed to booster anyway to make the mix work. On the delivery end, valves with bleeds can be handy for similar reasons to switch fill tanks easily. Again, the booster or whip can remain pressurized.

Finally, the last piece of HW that can be a real work saver is the splitter. One embodiement of this would be a single female DIN to two male DINs, thereby allowing two tanks to be filled simultaneously. Again, when diving with buddies, one can avoid a lot of variability and repeat work.

Again, beautiful panel, wow, it is very impressive. OTOH, one can get by with a lot less and get more out of it in the end. The filter should also be QD'ed to use it only when required. Many of them are governed for flow rendering them virtually useless in a booster scenario unless they can deliver high flow.

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