Watertight Compartment – Construction

After designing our watertight compartment we deferred most of the construction to professional machinists and welders. Our previous waterproof compartment post shows the three parts we need machined and also gives an idea of what the final product will look like. This post will give you an idea of how the parts look and fit together in real life.

Machined Parts

As mentioned above, we had three parts machined for the waterproof section. We can't tell you much about how they were made – only that they were cut out with a CNC Milling Machine. Darin Marion from Porter's Precision Machining made the parts for us. Below are pictures of each of the parts (reference this post for a cool "Idea to Finished Product" comparison!):

Plug Housing

Plug

Back End

Welding

After making the inserts for our aluminum frame we needed to have the parts welded in place. The plug housing and back end were welded to a 12inch section of our extruded aluminum body. Again, we had the welding done professionally. We used Cumberland Ironworks (in Pownal, Maine) who welded our parts within one day. Below is a picture of the welded midsection.

Welded Compartment

Assembly

The last thing we had to do was add all of our accessories. and assemble the compartment. We threaded on each of our cord grips and mounted the Presta Valve using Loctite. We also bent some chain to fit over two M6 bolts we designed threaded radially into the plug. These bolts and the chain give us a good handle for applying equal pressure to the entire plug. This makes it much easier for one person to pull the plug out on the fly. The pictures below show mounted cord grips, the finished plug, and an image of our plug/wire setup.

Cord Grips in Back End

Finished Plug

Plug w/ Wires and Chain