Hey guys, Rusty here at Blue Robotics with exciting news and a new product to go
with it!
Today we’re announcing a concept that we’ve been thinking about for long time: the WetLink
family of products.
The WetLink family helps you connect electrical things underwater.
It’s starting off as a series of penetrators and tools but we have big ideas for the future!
The idea for WetLink is something we’ve been dreaming about for a long time!
That name, “WetLink”, even pre-dates me hiring our first team member at Blue Robotics
back in 2015.
At that time, I was still new to the marine robotics world.
I saw the need for low-cost thrusters and was starting to see the need for other component
products.
I saw that it was hard and expensive to build anything in this industry and that that was
holding back many people, including myself, from realizing our ideas.
I made it Blue Robotics mission to solve that and had big plans about how to do so.
Many of those plans became reality over time as we launched products like our underwater
enclosures, sensors, electronics, lights, sonar, and of course, the BlueROV2.
Since then, the needs of our customers (which are your needs) have grown and the stakes
have become higher - those of you who were hobbyists and students who backed our 2014
Kickstarter campaign are now out there running businesses, you’re doing research, and you’re
pushing the limits of marine robotics.
You’re using our products in the coolest applications: helping ecologists control invasive
species, operating for hours per day on aquaculture farms, exploring underneath the polar ice
caps, and conducting cutting-edge autonomous systems research.
As your needs have changed we’ve had to rethink how we run our company.
The WetLink family of products that we’re announcing today is the culmination of that
original idea with the rapidly-advancing needs of our customers and industry.
Today we’re announcing the first product in the WetLink family and the first product
in this new chapter of our history: the WetLink Penetrator.
Cable penetrators seal electrical cables as they pass into a device or enclosure and our
existing cable penetrators are one of the most important components of our product line.
Not only are they popular by themselves, but we use them as components in over 40% of our
other products.
We use over 20 of them on each BlueROV2 alone.
They’re a critical part of our mission to offer low-cost marine robotics components,
so we’ve put a lot of focus into making this next-generation penetrator the best that
it can be.
The WetLink Penetrator is low-cost, easy to use, and rated to a depth of 950 meters.
It comes as a kit for you to install yourself and we’ll also be transitioning to using them on
all of our products.
I'll explain each of the parts and show you how it goes together.
First is the aluminum penetrator bulkhead, which has an M10 thread and O-ring seal that
is compatible with our watertight enclosures.
Printing on the side indicates the nominal cable diameter that the penetrator is designed for
This one is for 6.5mm cable, like that used on our thrusters, and this one is for 4.5mm
cable, like that used on our lights and gripper.
Next is the seal, made from flouro-elastomer rubber and designed specifically for the WetLink Penetrator.
The color of the seal matches the label to make sure you have the right parts.
And this is the plug, which tightens down in the bulkhead, compresses the seal, and
in doing so, forms a high-pressure watertight seal with the cable.
Last is the nut, which fastens the bulkhead to your watertight enclosure.
This nut is specially designed with a cutout on the side so that it can be passed over
wires during installation.
Today we’re releasing the 6.5mm version on our store and on our thrusters, and other
sizes, like this 4.5mm version, will be available soon.
I want to tell you a little bit more about how we developed this product and particularly
about how we tested it to make sure it’s awesome.
We started about a year ago, with a clean sheet of paper and some simple requirements:
we wanted an underwater cable penetrator that reached new limits of performance and reliability
to enable our customers to do bigger and more ambitious things.
We wanted it to be easy to use, to not require any adhesives or potting compounds, and to
be absolutely trustworthy.
We examined a wide range of technology and design options to achieve this and eventually
narrowed it down to the compression gland cable penetrator design of the WetLink Penetrator.
We studied the extreme environments that our customers operate in and we built new testing
capabilities to push our prototypes to the limits.
Our most important new testing equipment is the Pressurizer, our newest pressure testing
system, which has two simultaneous test tanks each with heating and refrigeration systems
to simulate extreme hot and cold temperatures where other designs fail.
There’s a power supply that allows us to send large amounts of current through the
cables during tests to simulate electrical heating.
And, a custom-designed pump cycles the tanks to over 1,200 meters of water pressure, sometimes
hundreds or thousands of times in a single test run.
The WetLink Penetrator went through 12 revisions as we learned its limits and consistently
made it better.
We put hundreds of samples through intensive testing, including our final validation testing,
which subjected samples to a battery of tests to demonstrate extreme reliability.
In addition to that, we did hundreds of hours of field testing with WetLink Penetrator-equipped
ROVs, pushing them well past our normal limits.
We also stepped up our production capabilities, adding new tools and in line test equipment
to ensure that every WetLink Penetrator that we use in our products is assembled to high standards.
Each penetrator is subjected to a high-pressure leak test on the production line so that every
single unit has been tested before you receive it.
Because of all of that, we have a design that we are extremely confident in and proud of.
It will become a cornerstone of our WetLink product family and a key component in most
of our Blue Robotics products.
In addition to the penetrator, we have a new set of tools to make it as easy as possible to
assemble the penetrators on your cable.
The WetLink Penetrator Assembly Block acts to hold the penetrator bulkhead during assembly
and the WetLink Plug Wrench helps you tighten the plug and compress the seal.
We also have an updated penetrator wrench that will be better compatible with all future
WetLink products.
These tools aren’t essential to assemble the WetLink Penetrator, but they do make it
easier and faster!
Today is the start of the WetLink era and we’re stoked for what the future holds.
We hope to enable you and many others to affordably design and build new subsea
devices, explore the oceans, and advance humanity’s understanding of the underwater world.
We’ll be happy if we can be just a small part of that!
That’s all for today!
Thanks for watching and see you next time!