Open-Source Glider

create a blueprint for an underwater glider for hobbyists to explore and study down to a 200m (and later 1000m) of our world oceans

Ehsan Abdi

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Description

The idea for this project was inspired by a Hackaday Project (https://hackaday.io/project/20458-osug-open-source-underwater-glider) from Alex Williams which managed to win the Hackaday price of the year 2017. He did an amazing job in my opinion but my aim is to take this idea one step further and create a blueprint for a glider where students and hobbyists from all over the world can use in order to explore and study down to a 200m (and hopefully at a later stage 1000m) of water autonomously for for weeks or even months at a time without using an expensive commercial glider.

Details

The glider will consist of three separate sections. These are buoyancy drive, mass shifter and electronics sections. Each section will be housed inside a 5" BlueRobotics pressure housing. This way, later we can upgrade the buoancy drive section to reach the full 1000m depth.

Initially I will focus on making a simple but robust buoyancy drive system. This will inistially consist of a custom-made rolling diaphragm and a linear actoator.

Files

VBD compartment v4.f3d

Initial design of the pump

fusion - 2.01 MB - 08/27/2024 at 21:22

Download

Components

1 × 5″ BlueRobotics Housing https://bluerobotics.com/store/watertight-enclosures/wte-vp/
1 × Linear Actuator https://www.aliexpress.com/item/4000849922418.html?spm=a2g0o.order_list.order_list_main.114.6e8ecaa4fgNPyK

Project Logs

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Testing the first design
Ehsan Abdi • 08/27/2024 at 21:21 • 0 comments

I just printed a couple of parts to quickly try everything together.
The hardest part was to glue the seal to the housing. The seal is made of silicon rubber which does not really adhere to anything. But finally, using some silicon-base adhesive I managed to quickly test things together.
Making a Rolling Diaphragm Try#1
Ehsan Abdi • 07/11/2024 at 13:46 • 0 comments

The idea was to try to make a rolling diaphragm the easiest way I could think of and see what happens. Since it needs to be flexible, I decided to make the first out of silicone rubber. I used the housing itself as part of the mold and 3D printed a few more parts to act as the rest of the mold.
It didn't turn out too bad but I think I will try another way next time and not using the housing as a part of the mold because I had a really hard time removing the piece!