Thanks for the new data to chew on. I'm not sure how the Schilling ring thruster is designed to run since when it was explained to me by my friend Scott Reed my brain was over loaded, but it maybe close to what DARPA is doing. I'd like to get one of the DARPA rings and install carbon fiber blades in them. I've seen one of the SLA prototypes of Schillings blades and perhaps if it was a finished design shape I could do a digital scan to get a point cloud then scale it to fit in the DARPA ring and then make a mold for it.
Not having to convert electric motor power to a hydraulic motor to to run a thruster is one of the advantages of the Schilling design. The DARPA thruster looks to be allot more efficient then your standard prop setup but the Shilling design where your compressing the water and not getting any cavitation and allot less entanglement problems with seaweed, ropes and the like, looks to be the better model. Of course if they won't start making them again or sell or license the patents then it's all academic. I would venture to guess that DARPA would of liked to use the bladed design Schilling has but the couldn't get the patent for what ever reason. The current DARPA model at about 8 inch diameter looks to be a great unit for PSUB's. The problem is that usually products made for ROV's tend to be really over prices since the people that usually buy them can afford it, such as oil companies.
I'll see if I can find the Schilling Patent data today.
Cheers Brent Hartwig
From: DJACKSON99@aol.com
Reply-To: personal_submersibles@psubs.org
To: personal_submersibles@psubs.org
Subject: Re: [PSUBS-MAILIST] Ring Thruster Data
Date: Sun, 7 Jan 2007 10:59:06 EST