Dave_Hicks

I had two transient, seal hunting PNW Orca's come right up to me and size me up for snacking about 10 years ago while I was on a safety stop. They sniffed but did not taste! I never saw them at all. Everyone on the dive boat could see everything and when I surfaced, I was like - What's going on???

I'll be shooting my Nikon 8-15 with a 1.4tc up in God's Pocket next week. I will share some photos.

Now that the n120 port extension is completed and passed its first deep dive, I wanted to create the n100 model. I made a 20mm n100 test print and it came nicely. The initial draft was made from some second-hand measurements which are rarely perfect on the first draft. I will borrow some n100 ports and a housing to refine the fit in the next couple of weeks.

There is always a better design available. I'd probably experiment with either putting a bridge across the top of those gear teeth, making sure it clears the housing sprocket, or put a thin wall behind them. Both solutions would not alter the inner or outer diameter and would significantly increase the strength of the part. Additionally, a chamfer around the base of those gear teeth could improve layer adhesion reducing breakage. Finally, using a stronger material like ABS in a printer with heated chamber would make it much stronger. The extensive stringing visible on the gear indicates that it could use some more fine tuning of the printer and filament, which could further improve the results.

Seems like a lot of personal info being dropped publicly in this thread. Maybe clean it up and remove all the PII?

A camera zoom gear should work fine with PLA. PETG might be tougher as it flexes a bit and is less brittle, but both should work well. I have printed many gears and never had one break in years of use. If you printed a gear and it is breaking, you need to review how you are printing it. It is most likely that you need to work on printing parameters to improve the result. Dry your filament for 8 hours Increase wall perimeter count to 10 Slow down the print speed to 100mm/s Try another new roll of filament I would be surprised if that didn't solve your problem.

I have the Z105 with my Z8 camera, but i also have a 60mm lens. I use the same macro port for both, adding 20mm for the 105 lens. I am not sure i need the giant MFO-3 add on when I can shoot 60mm whenever needed. If i want to go crazy and can add both the Kraken wet-wide lens and a +10 diopter to the 60mm and cover super macro to full wide angle.

30 meters of multi-core fiber appeared on my doorstep: I'll package up and mail out to those who wanted some Monday morning.

I don't have any expertise with optical design, but I am going to question the assumption that "adding more glass" degrades performance. Logically, if you consider the design of any advanced lens, there are many pieces of glass, elements, involved. Lots of elements used to optimize the performance of the lens. However almost none of them are optimized for underwater use cases. Therefore it is completely possible to further improve the lens with more elements, even if they are external rather than internal glass. Would we criticize Nikon or Sony for bumping up the element count on a new version of an existing lens if it improved performance? Of course not. More glass does not equate to worse performance.

There are a ton of cutters on MakerWorld that would work just fine for fiber. They are common as cutting filament and PTFE tubes is a staple of printer maintenance. This one uses a common box cutter razor blade: https://makerworld.com/en/models/870732-filament-and-ptfe-tube-cutter-v2?from=search#profileId-1709412

Success! Decided to just dive into the deep end with an empty (backup) housing. Mounted a 40mm ASA printed port extension with a dome port and dove it to 106 feet. Nothing imploded and trigger the leak sensor. Using standard Nauticam orings.

I'm going to drop a housing off a long deep pier tomorrow and assess. Then dive it if all looks good.

Tomorrow i am going a local Seattle dive site, Cove2, which has a pier over pretty deep water. I will drop it down and see what happens. If it passes, i can dive it to 100 ft or so on a proper dive, sans camera.

That is certainly possible, at least one end cap. Plug the other end with an actual Port. Only issue is that now you are testing two parts and might not know which one fails. Is the pressure pot big enough for a housing?

My area of expertise!