A look underneath the water’s surface can be fun and informative! However, making a device to go under the surface poses challenges with communication and water proofing. That’s what this rubber band powered submarine by [PeterSripol] attempts to fix!
The greatest challenge of building such a submersible was the active depth control system. The submarine is slightly negatively buoyant so that once the band power runs out, it returns to the surface. Diving is controlled by pitch fins, which will pitch downward under the torque applied by the rubber bands. Once the rubber band power runs out, elastic returns the fins to their natural pitch up position encouraging surfacing of the submarine. However, this results in uncontrolled dives and risks loss of the submersible.
Therefore, a float to deflect the fins when a certain depth was reached. Yet this proved ineffective, so a final solution of electronic depth control was implemented. While this may not be in the spirit of a rubber band powered submarine, it is technically still rubber band powered.
After a prototype with a single rubber band holder, a second version which uses a gearbox and three rubber band inputs was implemented which provides approximately 10 minutes of run time. An electronic failure resulted in the submarine’s failure of its final wild test, but the project was nonetheless a fun look at elastic powering a submersible.
This is not the first time we have looked at strange rubber band powered vehicles. Make sure to check out this rubber band powered airplane next!
“The submarine is slightly negatively buoyant so that once the band power runs out, it returns to the surface”
So it’s positively buoyant.
“to go under the surface poses challenges with communication and water proofing”
So, hé attempts to solve communication problèms with rubber band ?
Yes. That is accurate.
He removes the need for communication, thereby solving the problem of communication being difficult but necessary.
Next step, scale up and immediately try a manned trip to the Titanic.
you are too late, the guy from OceanGate tried that last year and they are still to recover all the pieces…
Thats the joke i guess
It needs an analog mechanical computer for a guidance system.
…powred by a rubber band, of course. :)
The first iteration sort of did this. The dive planes would revert to surfaced position when the rubber band ran out. The electronic depth sensor was a huge improvement though. With no PID, and just a simple range for two set positions, it maintained a pretty stable depth.
Rubber band powered RC may seem quirky, out of the box thinking, but if you look at late 40’s or 50’s ham radio literature, you can find examples of how experimenters used this idea, back in the day.
One of the more interesting was a rubber band powered rudder control. The rubber band was geared to an escapement with a Geneva mechanism, which in turn was linked to the rudder with a push rod. The escapement had a spring loaded braking pin that normally kept it from running/moving.
When the control receiver detected a carrier, a solenoid would retract and pull the pin, the escapement would would advance, moving the rudder through a sequence of discrete positions: center, right, center, left, center, right, center left ad infinitum.
So… suppose you wanted to turn right, then straighten out… you keyed the transmitter until the escapement moved the rudder right, then
you’d stop/wait transmitting until the turn was completed. Then you keyed up the transmitter again to coax the rudder back to center.
Now here’s the rub: If you want to follow with another right.. you can’t directly command that. You must key the transmitter long enough to walk (briefly) through the next two Geneva positions, rudder left and rudder center, before arriving at the desired rudder right. So… a good pilot needed to remember which direction his last turn made, so that he could anticipate the aircraft’s behavior to the next RC signal.
Clumsy and dated, but still ingenious, from a time when RC power was limited and receivers ran on peanut tubes.
Sounds like the electrical power to operate the mechanism far exceeds the energy required to actuate the mechanism, so it would have worked just as well or better using battery power directly rather than rubber bands.
A solenoid to operate the mechanism could have just as well operated a ratchet that turns the rudder.
Wait until you look into the Ace Pulse Commander – I had one and it worked, if hilariously.
https://www.airplanesandrockets.com/electronics/Ace-Pulse-Commander/ace-pulse-commander-radio-control-system.htm
Many knickers died to bring us this information.
This is super rad. As someone who loves subs, and has bought way too many wind-up submarine toys that allllll suck, I would love to have one of these.
I saw the video twice, but couldnt understand how he measured the depth using pressure. I need something like this for my submarine build https://hackaday.io/project/203461-pvcsub-a-submarine-from-the-plumbing-aisle
More YouTube garbage.
The point was to make a financially viable video, which happens to include some mker adjacent content.
That is the opposite of doing a cool/useful hack, and figuring out how to make an entertaining video about it.
This is the scourge of the modern “science” YouTube space.
It isn’t about anything. It’s a video for video sake.
It’s commercial art in the guise of science/education.
Every genre has this garbage and it needs to be shunned.
HaD needs to stop highlighting this stuff.
Shame it.