BUILD YOUR OWN ROV

The Underwater Housing is one of the most important parts of the ROV, the housing protects the Electrical and Electronic components of the ROV from water, humidity and pressure. The underwater housing also provide a support for fixing the propulsion thruster's and other equipment to the ROV.

The Housing would have to withstand the water pressure at the depth you require to operate the ROV to. The Housing could be made of all sorts of materials but in general the ROV's you can purchase today have metal housings made of non corroding metals or housings made of cheaper metals, but with anti corrosion paint or other system for controlling corrosion.

In this ROV building project I propose to use Plastic pipe, the plastic pipe I have in mind is used for supplying gas to consumers around the country. The plastic is very heavy duty and it can be shaped and jointed by using heat applied by an soldering Iron or other hot implement. I have used this material for bouancy tanks last summer and the pipe could withstand a water pressure equal to 100 feet depth.

Other easily obtained materials are Diving tanks, Fire extinguishers.

The Underwater housing would also possibly require a Viewing port, this would be fitted to one end of the pressure housing and possibly made out of Acrylic material.

[ Introduction]

[Control Console] [Control umbilical] [Underwater Housing] [Propulsion] [Control system] [Underwater Video] [Extra equipment]