Sony DCR-HC42 Housing, DVD Burning & Camcorder Question

[diversteve]

One more thing,

Can anyone explain to me why it is that all of these housings are so expensive? Especially with the mechanical controls it just seems that $800+ is just the companies being greedy. Maybe its just me....

I toyed with the idea of making custom housings to sell to friends/acquaintances last year. So I did a little research:

Machining costs start at about $45/hr. with setup costs of between $60-100 for CNC machining. You can machine about 2-4 housings per hour generally. Diecasting is a lot faster, but the startup costs run into the thousands/tens of thousands of dollars. So you better run lots of them to recoup your investment.

A design engineer gets about $50/hr. and there's probably a good hundred hours or more work in a custom housing design since each housing design has to be optimized to fit closely around the camera it's designed for. Otherwise every housing would have 10 lbs. of lead weight in the bottom to compensate for the air around the camera. And they'd all be big, non-streamlined boxes.

I don't have any idea yet what it costs to R&D and manufacture LANC controller boards for electronic housings, not to mention getting someone to make the circuit boards economically. And then assemble and test the components.

Then you've got to consider that most camera manufacturers change designs every couple of years so everything has to be re-fit/re-worked on most custom housings. The LANC/Tube housing mfr's have the advantage here as the tube materials are pretty much off the shelf and once you have working electronics, they generally work over a broader range of cameras. Although even that's not a given, for every feature you want to support for a LANC camera, there's a circuit that has to be designed by an electronics engineer and incorporated for that function.

As ronrosa mentioned, there's tooling costs associated with metal housings - although I think Gates & Amphibico are cast, not machined - Ron, and the L&M/Top Dawg's are made of extruded aluminum tubing - but they still have to be finished. Setup on a casting die is at minimum a thousand dollar process, and extrusion dies are a multi-thousand dollar operation just for the design and manufacture of the die, not to mention the raw aluminum and paying someone to run the parts for you. I assume it's similar for molding operations if you go with a Poly/composite based housing like O/I - those housings are custom molded.

And when you've got this housing all assembled, you have to test and re-test it for durability. And probably have some sort of pressurized testing arrangement as well so you can test each one for leaks before shipment. Since most housings are designed to work as the ports get compressed under pressure, you can't just inflate them in water till they fail to test them, you have to be able to subject them to real world conditions. Anyone know what a pressure chamber that can simulate 450 fsw costs? I'll bet Gates does.

Then you have to consider the cost of the optics, a replacement flat lens for my housing cost me $40 last year and that's cheap, most flat lenses are in the low hundreds, a good dome port can run several hundred dollars to a thousand or more. And I doubt very much there's any housing manufacturer making their own optics, they're all likely buying them from an oem manufacturer. Given the small quantities purchased I doubt they're getting a very good deal either.

And all the litle add-on parts, knobs, handles, fittings, anything pressure related like pushbuttons or control handles has to either be sourced or custom manufactured. And a lot of it has to be custom work, the housing itself, control handles, front/back ports, LCD monitor housings are all custom work. Even the off-the-shelf stuff like clamps are not bought in sufficient quantities to be really cost-effective.

Then there's the cost of painting/anodizing the finished product. Most metal housings are anodized or powder-coated. My buddy does high-performance cars, powder-coating is in the $50-100 per piece range from his supplier. Probably be worth it to invest in a powder coater in a high production environment.

Then you've got labor costs for employees, someone has to put the things together, ship them, answer the phone, provide customer support, you've got to have sales people to travel around and sell them to dealers/distributors. And visit all the tradeshows/conventions/dealers pushing the product. And stay in hotels and fly on airplanes and rent cars while doing it. And a place to build them, utilities, 800 toll-free phone service for sales/customer support. And insure the building, contents, employees against fire, theft, accidents, disability, health etc.

Even raw material costs for each successive product that you do sell - which aren't cheap since you probably don't manufacture enough of any given style to make buying in volume a reality before the camcorder style changes and you have to retool.

Not to mention huge liability insurance costs to be able to offer some sort of reasonable non-flooding warranty to your customers. Even if your housing is over-designed, someone will find a way to make it leak and blame the manufacturer.

And how many housings do you really think a manufacturer sells for a given model? 100's? 1000's? So all your costs have to be amortized over the number of housings you think you'll sell over time. And every couple of years the camera manufacturers come out with some new upgrade, so all your old stock is useless and can be sold for pennies on the dollar - if you're lucky. Or you melt it down and re-use it. Look at how many years it's taken to go through the 8MM/HI8/Digital8/MiniDV/DVD formats. And how progessively smaller everything has become.

Anyone know the cost of an advertisement in Scubadiving? Even an active website can cost $100 a month or more, not to mention paying someone to keep it current. And professional photography for your product line. And tens of thousands of print catalogs/brochures to give away to all the diveshops, retailers and "tire-kickers".

Plus are you also going to offer lighting systems, carrying cases and all the other options that most manufacturers do? Just the carrying cost for the inventory that you have to maintain for these items is probably staggering. And shipping/receiving and warehousing costs for your both your finished products and raw materials.

So when you amortize all these costs over the price of the housing, it actually seems like it's a pretty good deal.

I'm sure there's hundreds of other things I'm not even aware of.

In spite of all that, I'm still considering doing this. I'll likely be making one off machined housings out of billet aluminum for some of the more common models. Probably by request only. If I can find an electronics guy to design my LANC circuitry reasonably.

I'm fortunate in that my father is a semi-retired mechanical design engineer who does solid modeling. And I know someone with a CNC Mill to do the machining. O-rings, clamps, handles, watertight fittings, LCD monitors, cables I've got worked out. Still have to work out the optics parts though, although I might just go with a flat port for simplicity. And find where I can get original camera drawings of the various cameras so we don't have to design by measuring. Although the project is on hold at least till next fall due to other pressing priorities.

Steve

 

[ronrosa]

Uh, I think you answered his question.

 

[meekal]

So far I've dealt with Ikelite and Gates. Both places have been beyond wonderful in their help and understanding of their product. I don't know the details, but they seem like small intimate shops. When you put a microscope on it like SJSPECK did, you can see why; it's been a labour of love to get where they are today!

 

[diversteve]

Uh, I think you answered his question.

LOL...

So sometimes I get carried away... My brain works faster than my typing or there'd be more. I once exceeded the SB limit on a trip report.

Steve

 

[ronrosa]

LOL...

So sometimes I get carried away... My brain works faster than my typing or there'd be more. I once exceeded the SB limit on a trip report.

Steve

I type fast AND I tend to ramble. Most of the time I end up deleting 1/2 of what I write so my posts are not too long.

 

[diversteve]

I type fast AND I tend to ramble. Most of the time I end up deleting 1/2 of what I write so my posts are not too long.

LOL Again...

That post was AFTER I'd deleted about a 1/4 of what I'd written initially...

 

[nshon]

I'm having some problems with not being able to set manual white balance with the Ikelite casing for HC40. See this thread. Something to keep in mind. I paid around US$680 for the casing FYI.

 

[ChrisA]

Hello. I purchased a Sony DCR-HC42 last night for $600 but have not yet opened. Do you have any advice on if we bought the right camera, what housing to use (that isn't is too expensive) and an external dvd burner? We are leaning toward electronic controls.

Thanks for any advice you may have.

The "Top Dawg" housing uses electronic controls. "ScubaToys.com" sells them for $799.
The Top Dawg will fit many different Sony camera so if you upgrade the camera later or if the housing floods, you can still use the samehousing. I think the camera has the required features, It's really the housing that limits what camera features you can use.

Did you buy the "right" camera. There are better ones for more money but in my opinion you need to move up to a three chip camera before there is noticable improvment in the picture. But then the cost of both camera and housing doubles or tripples. I think you good a good camera for that price point.

Later you can get a monitor back for the Top Dawg housing that puts an LCD screen on the back of the housing, then you can buy lights and a wide angle lens for the camera. You should be looking at editing software too. And a large, fast disk drive for your computer.

"Ocean Images" also make a housing for your camera for $850 and you might like thier controls better then Top Dawg's. Ocean Images has three control options and also offers an LCD monitor.

Deciding between Top Dawg and Ocean Images really boils down to the controls. Both companys havethier user manuals on-line. Read each manual. Prices are close.

In my case I really need an external monitor as my eyes just can't see the small viewfinder. I even have trouble with the 1.8 inch LCD screen on my housed Conon still camera. But at arm's lenght my eyes can focus well.

 

[ChrisA]

(don't argue untill you scoll dwn and read the "bottom line".)

I toyed with the idea of making custom housings to sell to friends/acquaintances last year. So I did a little research:

I did some "back of the envelope" studies too. My idea was to make a generic or modular housing that could work for many different camera. If would be fun to try and design a housing but only if it would be different then anything else on the market now

Maybe a combo DPV/Video housing with thumb tip control and head up display No point is making yet another housing

Another idea is a "positive pressure housing. A regulator anda small air bottle keep the housing slightly above amient pressure. Now if there is a lek you get bubbles not a flood.

Loads of room for inovation is this area

Machining costs start at about $45/hr. with setup costs of between $60-100 for CNC machining. You can machine about 2-4 housings per hour generally

Have you ever worked with carbon fiber epoxy composite? If sound exotic but the tooling can be built with simple hand tools for not much money. Lots of hours of work but little money. I can describe the process but in summary but let's say it is like die casting but cheaper fiberglass molds and low pressures like 2 to 4 PSI. Doable in a garage with $500 of materials and equipment.

I don't have any idea yet what it costs to R&D and manufacture LANC controller boards for electronic housings, not to mention getting someone to make the circuit boards economically. And then assemble and test the components.

The trick here is to use off the self electronics. LANC is nothing fancy, just low speed serial almost any small simgle board computer would work. What takes the time is the software. It's also the software that would make your housing different and stand out. You can buy computers that are the same form factor as the SIMM type computer memory for cheap.

for every feature you want to support for a LANC camera, there's a circuit that has to be designed by an electronics engineer and incorporated for that function.

Not quite true. It's like when you want to read e-mail or watch a dvd on your PC. The hardware does not change.

You could buy mass produced o-ring seals and design the housing to use either L&M's or Ikilites optical ports.

Since most housings are designed to work as the ports get compressed under pressure, you can't just inflate them in water till they fail to test them, you have to be able to subject them to real world conditions. Anyone know what a pressure chamber that can simulate 450 fsw costs? I'll bet Gates does.

You could always just go out on a boat and lower the housing down on a 400 foot long rope.
A comercial sized pressure cooker is good enough for testing to "normal" scuba depths. There cost a few hundred bucks.

My guess is that after investing a yaer of nights and weekends in development I could turn out housing for about $300 each. Of couse they'd retail for double that much

Bottom line: I can earn $1,000 it work a LOT faster then I could design my own housing

 

[diversteve]

Another idea is a "positive pressure housing. A regulator anda small air bottle keep the housing slightly above amient pressure. Now if there is a lek you get bubbles not a flood.

I did see a homebuilt Sharp camcorder housing which had a one-way presssure fitting on the top, the idea being that you pressurized the housing slightly pre-dive. I don't know enough about pressurization at depth to know if this was a good or bad idea...I have read that some housings are designed to seal as the water pressure forces the ends closer to the housing body.

Have you ever worked with carbon fiber epoxy composite?

That's an option I hadn't considered - it would certainly have the "wow" factor as well as be incredibly strong. I did consider the idea of some sort of plex molding ala Ikelite. I used to work at a place where they formed plex dust covers and it wasn't all that difficult. My rationale with using aluminum instead of composites was to use slightly thicker walls and possibly leave extra material in the base of the housing during milling so that less/no external weight would be required to compensate for the air in the housing. If I was doing custom one-offs, I could probably adjust this accordingly.

The trick here is to use off the self electronics. LANC is nothing fancy, just low speed serial almost any small simgle board computer would work. What takes the time is the software. It's also the software that would make your housing different and stand out. You can buy computers that are the same form factor as the SIMM type computer memory for cheap.

Not quite true. It's like when you want to read e-mail or watch a dvd on your PC. The hardware does not change.

Thanks, I don't know much about LANC design. I probably should have said a programmer's skills are needed to change the software to accomodate the various functions.

You could buy mass produced o-ring seals and design the housing to use either L&M's or Ikilites optical ports.

I have sourced all the o-rings I need through a local hydraulics supplier, they sell the full size range in the various materials. I wonder how many ports L&M or Ikelite will sell me when I'm technically a competitor. I do have another source, a small optical lens maker in SoCal who makes u/w lenses.

You could always just go out on a boat and lower the housing down on a 400 foot long rope. A comercial sized pressure cooker is good enough for testing to "normal" scuba depths. There cost a few hundred bucks.

My designer has designed high pressure gas delivery systems so I'm confident in his ability to design something that will seal at depth. I'm more looking to functionally test each one prior to shipment should I get to a more mass-produced stage. Also there's not a lot of 400' depths close by - I live in Phoenix. I suppose it would justify a drive to Lake Powell occasionally...

My guess is that after investing a yaer of nights and weekends in development I could turn out housing for about $300 each. Of couse they'd retail for double that much

Optimally, I'd like to build a housing styled after Gates, but with electronic controls for less money. Something with a single point of access that would have the engineering so that failure wasn't an option. As I mentioned, probably just sell to friends first till I get the kinks worked out, in case I had to replace someone's camera along the way, I'd prefer it to be someone I knew.

Bottom line: I can earn $1,000 it work a LOT faster then I could design my own housing

I certainly agree with you there, starting out this would be a spare-time operation until I sorted it all out. And maybe that's all it will ever be. I originally started with the idea of building a solid, reliable housing for my own use and expanded it after talking to a couple of friends.

Part of my problem is that I have no access to real data that indicates what the potential market for something like this is - I don't even have a local place that sells housings. Although when I mentioned it in passing to the owner of my LDS, he offered that he'd be interested in a co-marketing venture. My marketing may consist of word-of-mouth or people who see my housings for a while. I'll probably even post a request for comments in the R/D section on this board next year to gauge interest.

(don't argue untill you scoll down and read the "bottom line".)

That will never happen, I appreciate your comments and insights,

Steve