×
INTELLIGENT WORK FORUMS
FOR ENGINEERING PROFESSIONALS

Log In

Come Join Us!

Are you an
Engineering professional?
Join Eng-Tips Forums!
  • Talk With Other Members
  • Be Notified Of Responses
    To Your Posts
  • Keyword Search
  • One-Click Access To Your
    Favorite Forums
  • Automated Signatures
    On Your Posts
  • Best Of All, It's Free!
  • Students Click Here

*Eng-Tips's functionality depends on members receiving e-mail. By joining you are opting in to receive e-mail.

Posting Guidelines

Promoting, selling, recruiting, coursework and thesis posting is forbidden.

Students Click Here

Jobs

off shore electronics housing

off shore electronics housing

off shore electronics housing

(OP)
We're looking into manufacturing a housing for a offshore application (submersed in seawater) and I'm looking for a few options.  Currently the design calls for a plastic housing but the tooling on the production units is very high.  Staying with this type of concept I was looking at material suggestions that will both be corrosion resistant, dimensionally stable, and be impact resistant as undoubtedly something will find a way to bang against our device.  Toping my material list is HDPE.

As an alternative I was looking at different alloys as a cast-able option.  We have a casting house that may be able to help us with the tooling but their primary material is aluminum (not generally suitable).  Is there any low melting point alloys (<1200 F) that may serve as a suitable substitute for this application.  Any recommendations are helpful.

RE: off shore electronics housing

you say submerged, but you do not state the depth. one thing we did in the ROV industry was to buy off the shelf fiberglas housings and port them to the hydraulic system to maintain a slightly positive pressure inside the housing (around 5-10 psi or so)relative to the external pressure. the downside to that is you have to be careful about the electronics to make sure they can handle the pressure. on the plus side, the oil did a pretty good job of keeping the electronics cool. for the electonics that could not withstand being immersed in hydraulic fluid at pressure, we had to build a pressure vessel (we went pretty deep so we used titanium) to keep the laser gyros and such in. was not an off the shelf item!

RE: off shore electronics housing

(OP)
I'll be submersed in less than 100ft of depth in operation and the design will not lend itself to external sources of power or pressurization.  

RE: off shore electronics housing

6061 Aluminum if  hard (Mil-spec Type 3 class III if memory serves) anodized and sealed works fairly well offshore. Also gives you a nice surface for o-ring seats. That's what we used for our hyd. manifolds. Not sure what an equivalent casting alloy is.

Red Flag This Post

Please let us know here why this post is inappropriate. Reasons such as off-topic, duplicates, flames, illegal, vulgar, or students posting their homework.

Red Flag Submitted

Thank you for helping keep Eng-Tips Forums free from inappropriate posts.
The Eng-Tips staff will check this out and take appropriate action.

Reply To This Thread

Posting in the Eng-Tips forums is a member-only feature.

Click Here to join Eng-Tips and talk with other members!


Resources