Portable Blending Pannel

Fort Collins Bob

Hello Lance,

If you look here at the airspeedpress web site:

Untitled Document

You will find one that I made ... There are some pictures of it
mid page.

Let me know if I can help you out in anyway.

bob fridell

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Best Regards all
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Bob Fridell
Ouroboros #46
Fort Collins, Colorado

iain-hsm

That would have been me then, and IMHO it was more just asking questions and a difference of opinion than an argument. However if it had been a home build project, or if they were selling “as is” I wouldn’t have asked. But they came across as an “expert” dive shop acting as a manufacturer, trying to bullshit spending $15,000 and 200 hours in labour etc.etc. So I’m sorry it just looked like they were trying to jack up this one off “prototype” and all and they were looking for some poor sap to buy the POS, who couldn’t answer back and didn’t ask the right questions.
I did. They couldn’t answer. The Deco Stop

However I’m am all in favour of portable panels nothing wrong in them, correctly thought out and with the correct use of components. These pelican type cases are a pretty cheap way to store filters whips and adaptors. The case is frankly just a good cheap way to store cleanly and safely all the crap. So why not fit a engraved facia panel and harden up the tubing. Component parts are quite cheap, the most expensive in that was the filter tower and IMHO you don’t need the big 18” filter tower when a £120 ($250) 250mm (10”) tower at half the price would have been just a capable. Iain

Scuttle

G'day Lancer
I can remember a fellow who made these units up in Darwin years ago.
Rikki Weisse was the man who operated as Tek Ventures now called Cullen Bay Charter Services & the last time I contacted him on 08 89813049.
Mob; 0411 690 508 or 0407 779 972. It was a few years back though.

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sold CK182 now its CK243

Dave Sutton

You mean there's a better way than carrying a coffee-can of brass fittings of indeterminite origin, a few scuzzy rolls of half-used teflon tape, and an adjustable wrench or two (usually one too small and one too big) along with a hose and an old gauge with a loose face and a cracked lens? .

Another voice for a whip with QD's at each and and a small box of suitable adapters with QD's installed. Packs smaller, lighter, and is easier to work with.


Dave

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"Changes in Lattitudes, Changes in Attitudes, Nothing remains quite the same".... www.nobubblediving.com

Ben Field

I've been after a simple filling/blending whip for a while but constantly put off by the prices, £200+ in the UK for a short hose with a gauge at one end and a needle valve at the other. Ok I understand that the bigger and more accurate the gauge the higher the price but surely the hose, needle valve and fittings can be done for well under half that figure, leaving the gauge size to the end user?

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www.hugsac.org.uk

Beanie

yeah £70 for a needle valve and £60 for the hose with out the £40 of fittings is a bit steep

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Beanie
Gallery Admin & Library Assistant.
www.outlawdivers.org.uk
www.beandiving.co.uk
www.beanengineering.co.uk

Ben Field

Yup, have you seen the actual price of those parts?

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www.hugsac.org.uk

babar

There are some schematics in the oxyhacker book along with part numbers for mcmaster-carr parts. Everything can be built yourself, pretty easily and cheaply.

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Babar
Evolution Plus
Sport kiss

Fort Collins Bob

This is most surely the best way to go over all ... and you can get it
through the airport...

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Best Regards all
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Bob Fridell
Ouroboros #46
Fort Collins, Colorado

zzzzzzzz

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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z