106 aluminium6061-T6 housings, the deepest-rated one being suitable for 2100m; beyond that you’d need a different grade of material,” Stephen Ashley said. “A company asked us about taking their UUV to 3000 m depths, and we suggested something along the lines of aluminium 7075, which is a stronger grade that many companies often take to 6000 m in short-term deployments, as long as there are inspections every 2 or 3 months to replace sacrificial anodes and check for scratches.” He added that titaniumwould be the typical and (to some) obvious choice for such depths, and that Prevco Subsea does supply titaniumhousings but that aluminium 7075 is far less expensive than titanium. Titaniumwould however provide for a lighter in-water weight thanmany other materials, and lastsmuch longer thanmost, making it ideal for long-termdeployments. “Titanium isn’t very thermally conductive though, so if your internal electronics are generating a lot of heat, you might want to think about adding heat sink pipes or some other method of getting the heat out, although that might add too much weight,” Ashley added. “But it’s taken on a case-by-case basis, so we tend to work closely with customers in order to weigh up all the different factors and what the priorities are for the mission.” Wemet with Birns Aquamate, a US-based manufacturer of underwater connectors, and discussed its MC (Mini Connector) product series among others. “While aerospace, comms and automotive connectors are governed by detailed industry standards, underwater connectors are not, so companies in the offshore technology industry have to deal with incompatibility of connectors often installed on the same systems,” said Eli Bar-Hai. “To help mitigate this problem, we’ve aimed to design all our products including the new MC series with a strong emphasis on compatibility.” The MC units are designed as very small, volume-optimised circular units, and each has a locking sleeve that fastens against a step. Bar-Hai said other manufacturers produce similar locking designs but make all the parts from rubber, which can cause the locking sleeve to pull off during operations. Birns has improved on that by adding a metal ring, which serves as a stronger base than rubber and prevents the sleeve from flexing and slipping off. “Across our various connector designs, we opt for materials such as titanium, stainless steel, PEEK and aluminiumbrass,” he added. “And of course, all our contacts are gold-plated and designed to Mil-Spec standards. “We always have a large stock of those so that our lead times are as short as possible. In addition, wemake our own contacts in-house onCNCmachines sowe can control bothQCand inventory in the current challenging supply chain situation.” The company also showcased new deep-submergence cable assemblies with data transfer rates of 9.4 (±0.1) Gbit/s for data transfer in advanced subsea vehicles. Performance testing has shown that data consistently transmits at this rate over a range of pressures from 0 to 8700 psi or 600 bar (6000 m equivalent depth). The initial pin configuration in the 6000 m-rated Birns Millennium connector series tested for this capability is the Birns 3M-16, which features 12, 22 AWG data contacts, as well as four 16 AWG power contacts. Additional high data-rate configurations in the series are expected to be introduced soon. Tecnadyne attended the show to discuss its growing line of magnetically coupled thrusters for UUV systems. Its newest system in this series is the Model 2050, a direct drive thruster that was developed following requests by some customers to eliminate the noise created by the gearbox in their previous choices of thruster. “This means that in this new system, June/July 2023 | Uncrewed Systems Technology Marine connectors from Birns Aquamate Tecnadyne’s Model 2050 thruster
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