Help With O Ring, Sea & Sea YS-01 Strobe

[David Haas]

I've chatted many times with Devon too......

Another insight on o-ring grease he said you CAN use the silicone grease on SILICONE colored o-rings AND regular BUNA rubber ones but NOT the other way around (!!!!!!!)

I've done this with my YELLOW Inon strobe o-rings using the Inon grease on the YELLOW silicone o-ring plus on my BLACK BUNA rubber Fantasea housing's rear o-ring. So far no problem

I'm on the fence but mostly agreeing with cerich the Sea and Sea BLUE silicone o-rings when used with the proper specific silicone grease last a long time if not stored compressed.

Devon has likely seen a lot of gear in decades of service work and may be trying to solve what he sees as a long term problem simplifying a solution by a different (maybe BUNA rubber?) o-ring.

People on trips with Sea and Sea strobes (and occasionally a housing) use BLUE silicone o-rings and the yellow tube Sea and Sea grease.

Just one old guy's opinion

David Haas

 

[Tanks A Lot]

Another insight on o-ring grease he said you CAN use the silicone grease on SILICONE colored o-rings AND regular BUNA rubber ones but NOT the other way around (!!!!!!!)

I've done this with my YELLOW Inon strobe o-rings using the Inon grease on the YELLOW silicone o-ring plus on my BLACK BUNA rubber Fantasea housing's rear o-ring. So far no problem

I'm not entirely sure I read what you have written correct and I do not even know what Sea&Sea uses for their O-Ring, but I just wanted to point out the following:

Most of the silicone rubbers like FVMQ or MVQ are not compatible with silicone greases. For FVMQ and something like Molykote 33 the rubber would change 4% in volume and lose around 5 points of durometer. Other of the FMQ, PMQ, MQ, VMFQ and VMQ silicone rubbers exhibit similar or worse. Changes can range up to 30% in volume increase and 25 points of loss in durometer.

Dow has a paper published with regards to what these silicone rubbers can withstand and manufacturers like SuperLube do always exclude their silicone based greases from the above mentioned silicone rubbers.

As I mentioned above, I do not know what Sea&Sea uses, but I suspect it would be something like MVQ, rather than the more exotic and expensive things like FVMQ

 

[bvanant]

I personally use the S&S o-rings as delivered with Tribolube and have had no trouble, but on a recent trip to Komodo we were diving with the folks from XIT (Mike and Jody) who were using the new S&S strobes. They had some issues with tiny amounts of water getting in during use with the S&S o-rings and Devon suggested higher durometer. The new o-rings didn't have any leaks. And yes I understand that anecdotes are not data but it is hard to see how harder o-rings could make things worse. We use a lot of o-rings in sealing medical gizmos and lots of soft rubber for seals but they never get opened once assembled.
Bill

 

[cerich]

I'm on the fence but mostly agreeing with cerich the Sea and Sea BLUE silicone o-rings when used with the proper specific silicone grease last a long time if not stored compressed.

Devon has likely seen a lot of gear in decades of service work and may be trying to solve what he sees as a long term problem simplifying a solution by a different (maybe BUNA rubber?) o-ring.



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Fair, and while I have serviced thousands of regs, designed a couple and in the game, I am not on the repair side of camera stuff, but have a good grasp of the concepts. In fact, I am pretty certain that a harder durometer oring will cause more floods, especially shallow. That said I may be missing something he is seeing as someone that services camera gear.

Right now, I have been diving sea & sea various stuff since 96 and the single flood I had was my fault (hint, the oring needs to be in place, not in camera bag because you get distracted) I literally have had 17 different sea & sea strobes , two cameras (old motormarine 2 and then ex) , a few Olympus housings (same oring different colour).

 

[cerich]

I personally use the S&S o-rings as delivered with Tribolube and have had no trouble, but on a recent trip to Komodo we were diving with the folks from XIT (Mike and Jody) who were using the new S&S strobes. They had some issues with tiny amounts of water getting in during use with the S&S o-rings and Devon suggested higher durometer. The new o-rings didn't have any leaks. And yes I understand that anecdotes are not data but it is hard to see how harder o-rings could make things worse. We use a lot of o-rings in sealing medical gizmos and lots of soft rubber for seals but they never get opened once assembled.
Bill

harder orings on something like the strobes when one side of the battery cap gets force (wave on roof, divers while holding, hitting something) are less pliable and if the cap moves is more likely to leak than a soft one. This is most likely to occur at surface or very shallow

 

[bvanant]

Is that surely true, the bit about harder o-rings being more likely to leak especially shallow. My take is that as long as the compression is acceptable (like 7% or so I think) and the o-ring is well contained, a jolt should lead to very little relative motion and you might argue that a less stiff o-ring might in fact lead to more relative motion and easier leaking. In any case, there are a ton of people who have flooded S&S battery compartments with the current S&S battery cap approach; being diligent is still important.
Bill