RECY'01 Tear Down

RECY'01 Tear Down
By George aka gtzavelas


Introduction

The RECY'01 is a Respiratory Minute Volume Keyed (RMV-Keyed) Passive Addition Semi Closed Rebreather.

The operating principals of such rebreathers is described in an excellent way in the following link Golem Rebreathers

Some differences of this unit versus other Passive SCR are:

• The main body of the rebreather is made out of stainless steel making it very strong
• It has one injection valve
• The exhaust air from the flows from the lungs to outside the scrubber then to the counter lungs and the back up from inside the scrubber.

The unit from the back, fully assembled


The Tear-down

The unit consists of two main parts: the body and the head/ canister assembly that slides into the main body. They are held together with 4 latches.

A. The Head

I bought the unit with two different heads: the original on the right and the modified one on the left. The original is better suited for using the unit in a twin configuration. The modified seems to have more convenient hose routing and is the one I am using.


The head, that includes the scrubber canister is seen below after beeping removed from the main body.


The tear down of the head follows:


Detail of the head. The P-Port can be seen in the middle. Standard Dolphin hoses are used. The holes are for the exhalation air to go down on the OUTSIDE of the scrubber canister. This is one difference from other similar rebreathers. There are claims that this in this way the scrubber is kept warm (by the exhaust air) and thus has longer duration.


Detail of the head, with the scrubber canister removed


The inside of the scrubber canister.


The inside of the scrubber cannister. The canister can take around 5Kg of scrubber. According to the HHS standard the duration with 5Kg is 8-9 hours. (HHS stands for Have Heard Somewhere)


B. The tear down of the body follows:


The main body that contains the belows and the injection system.

The main body splits into two parts by removing 4 screws.The upper parts is hollow (to accommodate the head.scrubber) and the lower part has the belows. The injection system is located between them.


The inside of the upper part part. The 4 lathes that clip to the head are seen on the outside.

The single injector valve is seen on the inside (at 12 o clock).

The lungs can be seen in the middle.

At 2 o clock the short part is the "plumbing system" Any water that flows down (on the outside of the scrubber) is pushed out via the small pipe, into the small below and then via the exhaust valve on the outside of the unit.


The top part from the other side. The one way valve is seen in the middle and the trigger of the gas injection is seen on the left. The trigger activates the second stage regulator when the belows move up (during inhalation).

The two belows are screwed here. The 3 holes are for the exhalation air to fill the large below.

The small below is filled via the one way valve.

This is the probably the most critical failure point since if this valve fails (and the diver does not realize that) the mix will become hypoxic.


The two belows (internal and external). The proportion of the size of the belows define the K ratio and is a very important parameter for this type of rebreather. The ration of the specific unit is 1/7.


The inner below goes fits.


The outer below goes next.


The exhaust valve (bottom part) goes on the other side of the belows.


Detail of the bottom part (from below). The adjustable exhaust valve is in the middle.

These parts "slides" in the lower part of the main body.


The hose that leads to the injection valve.


The quick connector QC6 from Swagelok ( Swagelok.com the source for fluid system components) allows to plug in multiple gases (works great). To my knowledge has been used to -180m.

Some photos from the unit in action:


Some more pictures and video from the unit in action:

Video, Image 1, Image 2, Image 3


Discuss this article HERE