Casio DW1000 Replacement Module--Cheap

[JamesBon92007]

I was watching the Chinese F-91W watches on eBay for a while and finally just had to find out if they were exact copies of the infamous Casio or not, so I grit my teeth and hit the Buy It Now button and sent away my $2.82 via PayPal. It turns out that they look identical except it doesn't say "Casio" to the left of the model number. They also are not built as well and are not "Water Resistant." It also turns out that the module fits into my old DW1000 nicely with a couple of shims to center it. I had sent in my DW1000 to have the battery changed by a Casio service center to insure that it would not leak--it did. It has been sitting in a junk box for decades and now it's up and running again. In the past I had searched for a replacement module and the consensus is that there wasn't one. I don't know exactly where it was leaking from but I carefully cleaned the mating surfaces and lubed the O-ring. If it's leaking at the buttons then I may have to buy another $3 watch from China. If anyone knows how to replace the button seals please let me know. The Chinese F-91W has: Time and Date, Alarm, and Stop Watch. I don't remember if the DW1000 had a Timer or not. I made spacers using clear plastic from a theft-proof retail bubble package (it had a cell phone in it) plus the buttons were just a hair too short so I glued a strip of the plastic material to the contact strip that the buttons push against and that restored all of the functions. Here are some pictures of the Chinese F-91W, the original DW-1000 module, The "new" module and the spacers, and the DW-1000 with the new module installed. My old Tekna Velcro watch band has held up all these decades and is still in very good, usable condition with probably over 2000 dives on it.

I've also included a picture of the Chinesee F-91W and a Casio A155W for comparison. It looks like the module would fit this Casio too, as well as probably some other models.

The last picture is my "new" compass--it's an old wind-up dive watch case with an oil-filled button compass glued to the backing. I filled the winding stem hole with Epoxy. It's rated for 6 ATM so I didn't bother to fill the case with oil too. The rotating bezel is used to set the course. This is my second such compass--the first one I made about 50 years ago and I don't know what happened to it but I used it for many years on many dives.

So, what are you guys doing instead of diving? Sheesh, I haven't been scuba diving for months now. We were all booked to go to Cozumel for 32 days, leaving this Saturday.

 

[JamesBon92007]

I've also read that there is no replacement bezel available and it seems like they all break, sooner or later.

After grinding a flat surface on the backside with a sanding drum in a Dremel tool I glued (with contact cement) a 1 1/2" x 1/8" O-ring to the watch and drilled the rubber and put the screws back. It may not be as pretty as the bezel but my watch face has no noticeable scratches on it so it looks like the bezel worked! The bezel might be a good candidate for a 3-D printer. If anyone decides to make some please let me know how much. Meanwhile, I need to test the watch for leaks and then see how the O-ring holds up in actual use.

 

[JamesBon92007]

Yesterday I added a capillary depth gauge to the face. It is made from 1/16" vinyl tubing leftover from a "procedure" I had done. I'm surprised they let me keep it--I forget what it was for but obviously not blood or it would have gone into "hazardous waste." The tube ends are joined with about 3/8" of copper wire, coated with a black polyurethane adhesive. I also used the polyurethane to glue it to the watch face. I drilled a very small hole on the left side of the copper wire with a drill bit about the size of a sewing pin. As you can see I added the compass-in-a-dive-watch housing to the strap. The numbers were printed out from a P-Touch label-maker and cut to size and individually placed on the watch. Something neater would be nice, perhaps while letters on black would look good. I still have room on the watch band for a button thermometer but all of the ones I've looked at had horrible ratings. I've had really good results using the P-Touch labels on underwater stuff and wish it was more versitile, such as for printing a NDL chart. I dont know where I could stick such a chart--perhaps on the watch band. Then it'll do almost as much as a computer watch I spent about 15 minutes with it in the pool yesterday while trying out my rebuilt MK15 + G200B and everything went smoothly. I won't know for certain until I take the watch on a real dive but so far it does not seem to leak The "5" mark seems to read a little high so I may have to re-callibrate it once I compare it with a depth gauge or computer.

 

[JamesBon92007]

I carved this out of some kind of fairly dense foam that used to be some kind of a car mat. I got some white on black label tape and I'm thinking this one looks a lot better. I added a black, stainless steel watchband so all that is left that is original is the case. Now I have too many dive watches.