Comments on: DIY SCUBA: Death on a stick

By: matt

matt — Sun, 08 Jul 2007 03:44:11 +0000

my stepfather dives with a compressor from homedepot attached to a small filter that has a little bit of water in it, attached to a hose attached to a respirator and i know for a fact he doesn’t modify the compressor and dives for a living(cleaning boats). if someone could explain the modifications or why this kind of setup is unsafe it would be appreciated.

By: Steve Worcester

Steve Worcester — Fri, 06 Jul 2007 02:18:09 +0000

Your right; but I think they were trying to build one of these (see link). I first saw one in the Virgin Islands in 1971 and the CO thought scared me shitless then, as it does not. We had one aboard for the guests.

AIR LINE MODEL R260-3 HOOKAH
http://www.divers-supply.com/ProductDetails.asp?ProductCode=AJS0001&click=10117

By: Darrell

Darrell — Tue, 03 Jul 2007 22:54:52 +0000

When i was a kid i built a diving helmet out of an ozarka bottle. I cut out the bottom and hooked the air compressor up to the top. The air just came in all the time and excess bubbled out the bottom. I had to bolt 50lb of lead to it to get it to sink. I was aware of the danger of carbon monoxide, this is caused by the oil used to lube the compressor cylinder burning. What is needed is an oil free compressor.

I had an intercom to the surface that i could use by pressing a switch with my head.

Anyway i dived a few times and it was fun, but i quickly lost intrest.

The safety advantage of the bell over a scuba regulator is that you breathe normally and since you ware weighted down you have to walk on the bottom. I suppose if you ditched the bell and swam up from deep you could bust a lung though.

By: ck

ck — Tue, 03 Jul 2007 10:55:15 +0000

Gee thanx “Offisah Will, Sah”: Thx for keeping da rest o’ us dummies from viewing da video.u is mi hero we all’s luv u for uh, keeping us from frett’n our li’l heads off! u is di only one that could possibly straighten things out.After all u bin at dis diving biznis foh long taim now and like my “big brother” u will protect us from/despite our child-like, ignorant selves. ["...Update: The video was removed after reading my response to it. I went ahead and puled the youtube link since it's useless."]sic. TIRANT!

By: Bob Sites

Bob Sites — Tue, 03 Jul 2007 08:49:34 +0000

I can’t agree more with the “rant.” Scuba diving requires accurate, reliable, safe equipment. The simple act of jurry-rigging a positive pressure air delivery system in a closed environment violates all three stipulations from the get-go.
To be quite frank, this person should be dead. His breathing “equipment” probably raised the concentration of carbon dioxide and carbon monoxide to dangerous levels. Whenever you increase ambient pressure you increase the amount of gas which can be solved. The human body can only filter out so much of these gasses, after which catastrophic organ failure occurs.
The skeptics and uninformed may see this as a demonstration of ingenuity, the knowledgeable understand that this fool is asking for death. NEVER EVER LET SOMEONE DO SOMETHING THIS STUPID, ever. Do not ever make your own positive pressure breathing system unless you want to die one of the most painful deaths possible.

By: tony

tony — Tue, 03 Jul 2007 06:57:34 +0000

it’s amazing how much attention a stupid stunt can get though, this is probably the most commented on story recently put on hackaday, and it’s only about two days old.

By: Static

Static — Mon, 02 Jul 2007 23:45:02 +0000

The reason to rant about it is because these idiotic activities can impact our chosen past-times.

By and large, I’ve been impressed with the attention to safety that I’ve seen in this community. Most of the people that post their creations, do so with an eye to safety and with the understanding that they have no control over who is going to be reading their write-up. Sure, I’ve got a coil gun downstairs that punches through metal. I regularly engage in pretty hazardous activities. I do all of this AFTER examining the dangers involved, and learning how to mitigate those hazards.

By: Matt

Matt — Mon, 02 Jul 2007 22:25:05 +0000

always test your mods this guy has the best idea

scuba cat

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SN1VcgRrEM8

By: Marco

Marco — Mon, 02 Jul 2007 21:06:17 +0000

Why bother posting a link at all only to rant about how stupid it is ?
And if safety is a factor, the next time someone adds a gauss gun to his robot should that be censored too ?

(..and for statistics purposes, this is from another AOW diver who doesn’t care what people do in their spare time as long as they are too far away to cause me any harm..)

By: Chris

Chris — Mon, 02 Jul 2007 19:38:32 +0000

Well, If we don't allow for Darwinisms, This will happen:

http://youtube.com/watch?v=fAYnc_-ddlw

By: Nox13last

Nox13last — Mon, 02 Jul 2007 19:29:11 +0000

Lol @ overproof.

I agree, Darwinian law states that our natural population will eventually balance itself out by fatefully forcing people will kill themselves (usually in a very humerous manner).

Let 'em get on with it, I say, and laugh at them when they do.

By: Static

Static — Mon, 02 Jul 2007 18:43:33 +0000

It's pretty interesting the number of people who are expressing dismay at this hack being singled out for admonishment. Very interesting is the correlation between these people and the obvious lack of understanding of the physics of the hack.

Partial pressures. Hemoglobin affinity. They're not hard concepts, especially when boiled down to the facts that you need for diving.

I dive professionally. In my community, we loose people to stupid accidents with some frequency. I've reviewed more accident reports than I care to think about. A big chunk of them are due to something simple or stupid that is overlooked, or preventable. These are with purpose-built rigs, and typically a full set of safety protocols in place.

Testing a rig without even the benefit of another person in the water, with a purpose built, tested rig, is stupid beyond comprehension. It shows a lack of consideration and research regarding the activity.

Seriously, think about it. If you saw some video of a guy playing around with 5 farad caps, licking them to make sure they were discharged, you'd be screaming about it. It's only a matter of time until the guy blows his tongue off, and simple luck that it hasn't happened yet.

I've been a troll on this site for over a year. I've got a dozen little hack/bashed projects downstairs, mostly thanks to inspiration from this site. I'm really happy to see that the mods for the site do have the balls to draw the line somewhere, and recoginize a dangerous hack when they see it.

By: Jan

Jan — Mon, 02 Jul 2007 18:31:08 +0000

@Spencer
@OldGlory747:

Thanks for your explanation, now I realize where the problem is.

Regards,

Jan

By: farthead

farthead — Mon, 02 Jul 2007 17:58:18 +0000

Um why? I did scuba diving with a device exactly like that but was gasoline powered back in the 70’s and 80’s It was sold by evinrude and provided air to two divers while floating on the surface. The evinrude aquanaut was incredibly cool and made it easy to dive for most people that cant stand regulators. it had a constant wind of air in your face wheil running and you had 50 feet of hose.

the ONLY was they would “die” would be from oil contamination. if you filter that out or use a compressor that does not need oil ( reed and bellows type compressor) that would work perfectly and not kill you.

By: OldGlory747

OldGlory747 — Mon, 02 Jul 2007 16:57:36 +0000

Jan, I’ve got to tell you that while you are right about the concentration of CO2 not changing, the amount of air that you breathe increases as you descend on a dive. This causes a greater exposure to co. And before I hear anyone say “well you are getting a greater percentage of o2, so the fact that you are getting a ton of co doesn’t matter!”, you should think about saying that more like “Well you are getting a greater percentage of o2, so the fact that you are getting a ton of POISON doesn’t matter!”. Fact is that eventually (and not slowly either) your body cannot support itself after enough of your hemoglobins are unable to release the carbon-monoxide and unable to attach to o2. Talk about a bad way to go. Death by asphyxiation when there’s oxygen aplenty all around you… bleh.