STEM ROV Assembly Teaching (2021/4/22 at Changbin Junior High School in Taitung County)

The ROV MAKER team was invited to Changbin Junior High School in Taitung County on 2020/22 to conduct a course on STEM PVC ROV assembly.

Changbin Junior High School in Taitung County is one of Taitung County’s self-made education and technology centers. This STEM ROV teaching course is mainly one of the two physical courses planned by the center this year. It provides teachers who are interested in STEM ROV, and a face-to-face practical experience, assemble and share courses.

This course runs from nine in the morning to four in the afternoon, and the last hour is the PVC ROV testing and calibration underwater. Participating teachers need to assemble each part of the STEM ROV by themselves. During the period, ROV MAKER team will also share the experience in assembly and what kind of knowledge can be used to improve ROV performance.

The first part of the class is the frame assembly. The SeaPerch model is taken as a teaching example. SeaPerch is an smiple PVC ROV model that can be easily assembled with a few parts. PVC ROV is not only in this shape. After being familiar with the assembly and working principle of STEM ROV, everyone can create their own water PVC ROV!!

The tools used in this part of the assembly are PVC cutters, electric drills, etc. This part of the assembly requires special attention to the use of tools to avoid injury.

When assembling the frame, We also shared relevant experience, including design trade-offs and the source of buoyancy. These will help to design your own shape of water pipe ROV.

The second part of the class is the assembly of the propeller. Another issue in the design of underwater robots (ROV) is waterproofing.With the water pressure from the depth of the water, underwater robots of different depth levels will adopt different waterproof technologies, which also makes the selling prices of underwater robots of different depth levels quite different.Considering the cost, the 365 DC motor and two-blade high-speed propeller are used as the thrust source for the STEM ROV. The film box and wax max ring make the propeller have good waterproof performance above one meter of water.

In the assembly of the propeller, we shared relevant experience, including how to improve the efficiency of the propeller, the principle of using forward and backward propellers to replace the rudder, introduction of DC motors, welding precautions, and precautions for using wax max ring.

The last part of the class is the assembly of the controller. The controller in ROV MAKER’s Ipaneam kit uses a PWM controller with a joystick. In addition to efficiently controlling the DC motor, it also provides users with convenient and intuitive control.

In the controller assembly part, the experience shared by ROV MAKER includes the introduction of the principle of PWM, the introduction of the ROV control method, and the circuit docking and testing of the controller.

After the assembly is completed in class, it is the outdoor PVC ROV test underwater.

The source of the buoyancy of this STEM ROV comes from the foam tube rather than the PVC frame itself. In class, it is recommended that the length of the foam tube is kept as about 12 cm, and correct the length of the foam tube according to the diving conditions during underwater test.

In addition, we also let the teachers to use batteries of different voltages to feel the change in thrust performance!!

Thank you for the invitation again from Changbin Junior High School in Taitung County!! If you are interested in the assembly of STEM ROV, please refer to the following official website article