My Hew Porter plates

[-JD-]

Awesome! I thought @Eric Sedletzky was the only one making single tank plates, but I was wrong.

Golem Gear makes a dogbone-style plate with a single-tank bend profile:
Golem Stream Backplate

It is the only other (than Eric's) metal one available for purchase that I am aware of. (VDH is no longer listing the flat plate - for now or for good I don't know.)

 

[graham p]

Eric's plates are a work of art, I dont have the patience to do what he does with a sheet of metal. If it wasnt for the CNC machines I wouldn't have completed these.

 

[lostsheep]

Awesome! I thought @Eric Sedletzky was the only one making single tank plates, but I was wrong.

I know of at least one other person who made these (304 SS)

 

[Couv]

Question. What is the purpose of the bends down the middle for a single tank plate? Neither my Freedom Plates nor my Vintage Double Hose plate has the bends in the middle and are certainly strong enough.

Cheers,

Couv

 

[lostsheep]

Question. What is the purpose of the bends down the middle for a single tank plate? Neither my Freedom Plates nor my Vintage Double Hose plate has the bends in the middle and are certainly strong enough.

Cheers,

Couv

Here ya go:

Stainless Steel Single-tank SCUBA Backplate

ETA: It looks like HUWPORTER is following this thread so I'd like to take the chance to say thanks for the design and for sharing your drawings. I stumbled across them and used them to CAD my own variant (shown above) about 6 years ago. Cheers MATE!

 

[Couv]

Here ya go:

Stainless Steel Single-tank SCUBA Backplate

ETA: It looks like HUWPORTER is following this thread so I'd like to take the chance to say thanks for the design and for sharing your drawings. I stumbled across them and used them to CAD my own variant (shown above) about 6 years ago. Cheers MATE!

Very nice plate, website, and pictures. But I still do not understand the purpose of the folds. Are they to provide stability if one does not have anti roll features built into the wing?

 

[-JD-]

Very nice plate, website, and pictures. But I still do not understand the purpose of the folds. Are they to provide stability if one does not have anti roll features built into the wing?

Yes, a built-in, low-profile STA.

The rails and the wedges act as tank cradles on the FPs. With the flat upper section, the anti-roll tube on the wings work there as well.

 

[graham p]

Exactly, with the "W" bend the tank will not roll or twist at all on the plate. A little redundant with my wife's VDH wing, but my wing doesn't have the anti roll bars and the tank is rock solid on my back.

 

[huwporter]

ETA: It looks like HUWPORTER is following this thread so I'd like to take the chance to say thanks for the design and for sharing your drawings. I stumbled across them and used them to CAD my own variant (shown above) about 6 years ago. Cheers MATE!

My pleasure! Great to see people putting them to good use.

Yes, a built-in, low-profile STA.

The rails and the wedges act as tank cradles on the FPs. With the flat upper section, the anti-roll tube on the wings work there as well.

Exactly that - if you have a wing without built in roll control bits and you tried to use a 'normal' backplate then you'd be strapping a flat surface (the spine of the backplate) to a convex surface (the tank), you only have contact at a single point and the tank will roll from side to side no matter how tightly you tried to cinch up the cam bands.

With the reversed folds, you now have a concave surface down the spine of the plate matching to a convex surface, which touches at two points and is stable.

When I first started making these in the early 2000s, there were no single tank wings with roll control built in on the market, though they have become more common now. My wife uses a Halcyon wing without roll control on her single tank plate, and I use an Oxycheq with roll control on mine - they both work fine.

(I don't claim the original idea by the way - I bought a plate from Portland Oceaneering in about 2001 that had the same kind of reversed spine, athough that plate had (many!) other issues, and there was also a similar plate in Aus made by a company called Black Art around at the same time.)

 

[lostsheep]

My pleasure! Great to see people putting them to good use.

I'm a machinist and I routinely design and draw parts, it's really refreshing to see other people who are willing to share their design work with the community. I understand the time involved and I try to do the same when I can.