Since I have always been a do it yourself kinda guy, and hate to have decent hardware lying about with no use, I decided to combine a few bits I had laying around into a complete CCR. Starting with a Dolphin that had been sitting on a shelf, my shearwater electronics that were pulled from my meg, and a Dive Rite battery pack from my defunct 10w HID.
The dolphin has always been a great platform to start building from, kinda like a 70's chevy nova, so with all the fun I have had messing with that, not to mention having one just sitting there gathering dust, I felt it was time to make a bionic rebreather out of it. I spent last week in Texas with GG assisting him with making a Kiss style CCR out of his dolphin, got me thinking. When I got home I layed out all the parts on the bench and started making notes about what else I needed. These things are never as easy as you first think.
One of the problems I needed to overcome was getting the shearwater electronics pod to be able to sense depth. In the meg, it was in the breathing loop, sorta dry but mostly a gas enviroment, not a salt water one. One plan was to make a tube filled with gel that penetrated the main housing and allowed pressure to come through, but not liquid, doable, but lots of room for destructive mistakes, then I mentioned my dilemma to Dave (wedivebc) and he suggested I make the main housing ambient pressure, like the orginal kiss displays. great idea dave, thanks. So I took one of john routley's 3 cell P port units, (nice design john!), set 3 k1d's in it and used a scuba LP hose and barbed fittings to join the sensor housing to the main housing. The main housing is my old diverite battery pack from my dead 10wHID light. I took out the switch, pulled the old light cable out, drilled out and tapped the old switch hole into 1/4npt, drilled 2 more holes and tapped them for 1/8th npt for the solenoid cable and theLP hose nipple.
So the top of the main housing has 4 ports one going to the meg handset with the SRI handset electronics display in it, one to the solenoid that will float on a hose between the O2 reg and the stock draeger dosage device using an adaptor from Tecme.de, a third running to the HUD and a forth providing a conduit between the O2 sensors and the housing sending data as well as pressure. The main housing will butt mount where the stock draeger supply cylinder would normally go. I got that Idea from the pics of Darlene's E-ccr dolphin project. I may move it through, as my HUD cable may not be long enough to reach the DSV, I could easily tuck it alongside the O2 cylinder with the ports facing up to give the cable more length.
Another problem that needed to be addresed was how to water proof the solenoid wiring. I soldered the wires, which were in a sheath, to the solenoid terminals, then wrapped the solenoid with tape kinda leaving a wall of tape above the level of the terminals, then mixed and poured epoxy into the miniature wading pool that was created and left to dry. the other end of the sheathed wire went into a compression fitting tapped into the main housing. I used scrap Meg HUD wiring for this and the same type of fittings to swage the cable into place. I filled the top of the lid with epoxy for good measure.
The rest of making the electronics work was just hooking up and shrink tubing wiring, making a battery pack and some neatinging up.
I pulled the K1d's from my sport kiss, but turns out they are a little low in output and the shearwater wont calibrate with low sensors, only one cal'd properly, but I did drop the unit in the pressure pot and took it for a 180fsw dive, worked just fine, so as soon as some new sensors, and a couple tank mounting brackets show up, it will be diving time!!