söndag, maj 21, 2006

Photos from the first dive with the lamp

So here are the photos from my first dive with my new lamp on the wreck "Falken"...

This picture shows you how I easaly can clip on my lamp-head to the d-ring on my webbings...


The next picture show how I tempory added my battery-canister to my 10/300 dive-tank, when I get my new 2x7/232 tanks this canister will be connected on a similar way, hopefully it's gonna be with the old tank-belt for the single-tank (the one that is used to attach my 10/300 tank on this dive).


In the water, getting ready to do the dive...


A close up on the lamp-head that shows how good it fits to my hand...

måndag, maj 08, 2006

My costs... :(

So today I calculated the cost for building this lamp... People have asked me several times and I have told them it would probably be about 1100 SEK.... not to bad... BUT with all the costs it added up to (look at this image)


Yes thats right... 1759 SEK!!! Yes thats alot... But I could have used less expensive parts, probably if I bought them from other places... I didn´t spend to much time looking for it... Or if can "get" pipes and other parts for free from friends and family.

And if you remove the things I don´t need to buy for my next lamp (battery-charger, glue, silicon, silicon-tool) means 420 SEK less = 1339 SEK which is more the accurate price for the lamp...

The less expensive parts in this lamp would have been the things from www.elfa.se and maybe the parts from www.sublight.se, 2 places with some higer prices than avarage... Why pick them? Fast delivery and hard to find other shops in stockholm... I could probably replace some of the connectors for cheaper ones and get it 2-300 sheaper that 1339 SEK... ;)

Any suggestion for sheaper parts? Or other parts to a lamp like this? Post it in comments...

lördag, maj 06, 2006

First dive with the new lamp!!!!

So just a quick note on my first dive with my divelamp... I will get back to you with some photos from getting into to the water and how I was mounting the lamp onto my other gear.

For me this was a success, this lamp!!! Me and Jörgen went to the wreck Falken (
http://www.dykarna.nu/diveSpots/show.asp?dyk=20) at Kungsholmen/Fredhäll in Stockholm. For me it was the first dive for the season plus a bunch of new gear:
- My homemade divelamp
- New divecomputer
- New Harness, Backplate and Wing (Never used wing before this dive)
- 2 new regulators with long- and shorthose
- New Mask
- New manometre (?is it called that?)

The visability was about 1 meter and very dark down at the wreck so my lamp was really tested... not in depth but how it was ligting up in the dark of Mälaren and also if it might leak or not...

So how was the lamp?? Fantastic... :D Shining reall nice and bright, easy to handle (with the goodman-grip) and switch-on-off. But when I got up from the dive I realised 2 leaks... First one (Which I thought it might be) was the connection into the lid of canister.



So I will probably still use this contact but I will put glue on the inside in and arround the contact (next picture)


The next leak was in the lamp-housing, also the cable connector and I will fix that eaither with glue or silicon from the inside:


The leaks wasn´t that bad at all. The first one gave about ½ DL of water in the canister so it was no problem using it through-out the whole 35 min dive. The second one gave just some dampness in the lamphousing whish is not bad at all... but I need to fix it before I go any deeper than these 13 meters....

Next I will make a list of all the parts with the prices and where I bought them, that will just be an suggestion where to buy them.. If you find them cheaper somewhere else please post a comment or just mail me... That will also show how much I payd to build this very simple and good divelamp... ;) And photos of course mounted on my divegear.

torsdag, maj 04, 2006

Diskussions about the batteries... ;)

Thanks for commenting my blogg... One person pointed out in the battery part ([ Homemade Divelamp ]: Batteries) that the capacity of the battery found in the the pdf about the battery is changed depending on the amount of Amperes used.

As I understand this graph shows how many hours/minutes the battery will last depending on the Ampere load on it... I am not very good at this electricity thing but I have read this graph like this:

1. First I calculated how much my lamp would use in Ampere during 2 dives:


Here the mathematics again:
P = U * I (P = Watt[W], U = Volt[V], I = Ampere [A, Ampere per hour])

'U' is simple, 12 V is standard for the bulbs and contacts to use. The 'P' is 35 W (from the bulb), so to get the 'I' = P / U = 35 W / 12 V = 2.92 A is this bulb using per hour.

So for using this bulb (35 W) for 1½ hour and have at least 1/3 left you need an battery of: 2.92 A * 1½ = 4.38 A is the bulb using for 1½ hour of diving.

Adding 1/3 to that gives us: 4.38 + (4.38/3) = 5.84 A which means that you need a battery with at least 6 Ampere Hours
.

2. What batteries can I use that fits into an pipe with radius of 100 mm?

I found this cheap batteries from biltema that fullfilled my caclulation.

3. I had a look at the graph that I found in the specifikations of the batteries:


So when looking at this graph I looked how long the batteries would last with the 35W bulb using about 4.38 Amperes during 2 dives which for me looks like it will last for at least 1 hour (60 minutes) in the graph. Close enough for me... ;)


In the end of may I will go diving on the west coast of Sweden to finish of my Diveleader + 3 star (***) CMAS course and will probably use this lamp quite a lot. So we will see if the batteries last for 2 normal dives in Swedish water.... I will get back to you about this.. with photos and the story....