E-CCR Draeger-Shearwater Dolphin

RonMicjan

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!!

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Dave Sutton

"So I took one of john routley's 3 cell P port units, (nice design john!)"



*Who's* 3 cell port design?

See this link:

3 sensor PP02 meter

Short memories, guys....


Nice Dolphin job BTW.

Dave Sutton

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"Silent Diving with No Bubbles and No Politics".... www.nobubblediving.com

RonMicjan

of course dave did it first, but I bought the part from john

"it takes a village to build a rebreather"

what just amazed me is that I put this together in 2 days from stuff I had.

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Dave Sutton

[quote=RonMicjan;69790]of course dave did it first, but I bought the part from john

"it takes a village to build a rebreather"

quote]



Hmmm........ another clone of the intellectual products of the Little Diveshop of Horrors... like the *other* 20 or so commercially available products that I designed and others copied for sale.... I ought to have started a company to make this stuff. I guess what I objected to was not that it was *made* by John but that you quoted that it was his *design* .... sheesh.



Yes, it is nice to build up something in the afternoon and dive it the next day. Well done!


Dave

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"Silent Diving with No Bubbles and No Politics".... www.nobubblediving.com

schford

Nice Job Ron - dead sweet :-)

Nice that so many board suppliers make stuff with your kit, beanies bits, bruces leccies, Johns bits and loads more peeps...

Well makes me think we could design a non commercial BOB really....

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shell-back

every one remembers Junk Yard wars , that fabulous show that challenged people to make usable items to complete a task with in a set time frame.

would it not be really awesome to have such an event for rebreathers. Well probably wont happen , but just for fun lets hear who your team would be made up of and who your expert would be.

4 people to a team and list the skills and reason of your choice.


This should entertaining enough ! Have a great week-end

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Billy Beal
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narked at 90

hi Dave, Ron
Ron nice to see the bits you get laying around the place fit into some thing new to play with!
Dave had the concept of the 3 k1d and Dave i have every respect for you,
this one made for Ron was modified from it's normal design to fit his needs,
but Dave if you ever think this is a money spinner I've only ever made 6 or 7
and am more than happy to put you name on them if you so wish,
but with all people like us that put are ideas in the public domain they do get copied good bad or wrong, I've been copied for a number of products and had one of my patents stolen so far,
maybe we start to call it a DS3 after Mr D Sutton
at the end of the day some recognition of an idea makes me feel good
"how about you?" but it isn't going to make you rich but will give you a lot of stress if you want to produce them

kind regards john routley



[quote=Dave Sutton;69825]

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Scuba_Vixen

Nice bit of kit there Ron.

All you need now is one of my Dolphin stands, and it'll look just like one of those high dollar fancy dancy rebreathers.


When I needed to interface the Jaska solenoid with my controller, I had to figure out a reliable way to do so. This what I came up with, so far it's been issue free.

I made a polycarbonate tube (like I used for my hud), but threaded both ends for sealcons, soldered the splice and sealed it in between with epoxy.



Darlene

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RonMicjan

nice splice, but why the plug at the end? Have you found that it wants to corrode? I didnt want to make anything unplugable, for corrosion reasons, every plug I have ever seen that went underwater eventualy corroded. Ever look at a prism secondary??

the jaska solenoid that I sent you is totally encased with just the cable coming out of the potting, the one I had (rather than buying a new one) had bare terminals coming from the base, totally unsuitable for saltwater, here is a better picture of my potting job for the wiring.

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RonMicjan

Darlene, do you have any manual way of dumping O2 into the loop? what are you using? I was thinking of using a Jetsam Kiss valve in parallel with the solenoid w/o the orifice in it. BTW nice bit O kit on your part also, I just used stuff that worked already, you built the elect's from scratch. My hood is off to you

hmmm, need a smiley that shows "my hat is off to you" any takers on coding that???

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