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Well it just goes to show that the march of technology never misses a stride.
I have recently jumped (Dive Boat?) ship by moving away from using a windows PC for all my on-line work to the world of the Apple Mac & iPhone.

I have to say that I am so impressed with everything that I doubt I’ll make the return journey.

I am currently sat in bed, late on a Friday evening (yes sad I know!) typing this post into a quite amazing app for the iPhone, created by some very clever peeps in the wordpress community (the software which underpins the publication & management of this and thousands of other blogs on the net.

This iphone app is provided free of charge, which is not only amazing but generous to boot. So maybe now I will find some time to actually update this blog (which is way overdue)!

The final machining (on the lathe that is) of the light is now complete:

The design of the light is perhaps best explained with reference to the following drawing:

With reference to the BOTTOM edge of the drawing, the small finger of metal immediately above the O-ring serves to limit the travel of the front glass. This ensures that (as the front bezel is tightened down) the glass itself can only travel ‘so far’ which translates to exactly 50% compression of the cross sectional diameter of the O-ring.

Again with reference to the BOTTOM edge of the drawing, the finger of metal protruding to the underside of the O-ring and alongside the front galss, serves to locate the glass yet allow it to move (slightly side to side in order to allow for thermal expansion) and also front to back (within the range allowed) as the glass is forced toward the rear by the bezel.

Water pressure once applied simply causes the O-ring cross section to extrude into an oval section with the maximum diameter touching the glass on the right side and the metal of the lighthead itself on the left.

The bezel is secured by four (4) stainless steel (M5) allen bolts into the main lighthead body.

Altough not detailed on the drawing, the MR16 globe is connected to the electronics via a ceramic socket and teflon coated wires which pass through the metal immediately below the switch section and into the rear housing.

The switch by the way is a Piezo Electric switch screwed into a milled and threaded M16 recess in the main body. The wiring for this switch also shares the transit hole from the front to rear compartments.

In the next post i’ll show the milling operation and also get into the cannister (not literally!) for the Lithium battery unit.

What we have now looks somewhat akin to an expensive wood carvers mallet so its time to crack on and start giving the aluminium ‘bar’ a recognisable shape.

Having now machined the ‘electronics’ or cable end we now turn our attention to the ‘globe’ end.

This is considerably more complex from a machining perspective and the allowable tolerances are very tight indeed.

It’s quite fascinating seeing a rod become a contoured head which Bert made look all too easy. I’m glad I wasn’t doing this part for the aluminium merchants would have been very happy indeed! Sales would have been rather brisk I think

The challenge is the inside machining with very narrow steps and ridges, the purpose of which are to:

First of all once the external contour was done we set about boring out the front face:

The clamping arrangement to the left I’m informed is called a ‘steady’ which is required to help maintain ‘true running’ when it comes to some of the finer control work later on in the machining process.

At this point the basic hollow is in place:

And next comes the initial sizing of the various ‘lands ‘ onto which the other elements will rest:

In the next post i’ll explain the contours in terms of what goes where…

The first thing to do was to learn how to use a lathe and later on a vertical milling machine!

I AM Joking!

Although these items of equipment were put to good use I could never have done this without the help and (Machinists view) of a good friend of mine Bert Wells (aka The Gremlin – private joke )

The first thing to do was to machine the aluminium rod down to size and then commence boring out the section that in a more conventional torch would house the batteries. In this lighthead, the hollow will actually hold the control electronics based on a PIC micro-controller part 12F683.

In previous (maglight) units I have placed the electronics in the sidemount battery cannister, but not on this design for reasons that will become apparent later.

Here is Bert machining the hollow for the Electronics:

And here we have a close up of the aluminium rod itself:

The fatter section on the left nearest the chuck will eventually house the MR16 globe.

A closeup – once things stopped spinning…

The next thing was to thread the inside of the housing ready to take the acrylic plug that will mount the cable gland and (optionally – there are two basic variants to the electronics design) a signalling LED.

More on this later on.

In order to give everyone some idea of just what goes into the making of a custom fully self designed Dive Light, I will over the coming days be posting up a series of articles describing what was involved. I will show you the stages involved, some of the difficulties encountered right up until the present day when the project is nearing completion.

Previous posts have explained more or less the rationale behind this particular project, suffice to say this is my third build (the other two having utilised the maglite torch as a base for the light head). Elsewhere on this blog is a downloadable pdf image of the actual light head design (fully dimensioned) and for those interested, I will be making available (for a small nominal fee) a downloadable eBook with video, drawings and source code providing all the detail you will need to build your own.

I will also be offering pre-coded PIC micros – ready to go.

(more…)

In the last post I explained my decision to build from scratch a new and revised lighthead that was somewhat of a departure from my previous maglight derived lightheads. (more…)

Recently whilst on a dive to 35 Metres the light fitted with a wide angle halogen suffered what was fortunately not a permanent setback – it flooded or rather the commercially made battery casing (an Otter box) flooded. (more…)

It’s been a while since the last post. Unfortunately a period of illness has prevented me from writing more. All is well again and so I thought that now was the time to put pen to blog so to speak.

As I write this I am sat on a Continental flight from Manchester to Newark en-route to Fort Lauderdale where with luck I’ll get some diving in – whilst putting more dive hours on the light. I may end up repeating some elements of the prior post which I’m trying to fully recollect as I write this So please bear with me! (more…)

As the title says… this series of posts will be concerned with my approach to the creation of an intelligent and versatile Dive Light.

After looking closely at the market I had few choices;

• Stick with the (initially) low cost replaceable battery type
• Hand over lots of cash for for a Halcyon or Sub
• Design and build my own and if the market looks viable – sell them at a fair price.

With a background in Electronics, some Microprocessor systems design (long ago) I not surprisingly decided upon option 3. (more…)

Diving content for all
Well as the category might suggest, this is the place made available by the guys at first4diving.com for us all to talk, chat, debate, and generally express our views on the specific aspect of our sport.

So I am waiting to help with and talk about anything to do with wreck.

First4Diving resident dive expert “That damned frog!”