. If anyone is using or thinking of buying a 360° swivel that looks like this (regardless of what brand was on the package), they should not be using it. Picture attached:
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Hmm, I understand where you are coming from, but by the same token that mine and a huge percentage of all the production runs have NEVER failed also proves that failure of the unit is NOT a given.
To be fair about the unit, most people are not aware of the recall data, they "just hear" it was recalled and "assume" its unsafe. I like to look a little further.
The units are manufactured by a number of manufacturers in Asia, NOT all the manufacturers were involved in the recall, (I have the data somewhere of the ones who were - I will try and find it).
If we look at the unit, its noticable it consists of two halves with two or more sealing o-rings and the halves are held together by a locking screw. The fear was that the locking screw could work loose, fall out and the halves would seperate causing a catastrophic loss of air. However the manufacturers have said when the units are assembled the locking screw is cemented into place by the use of a propriatary locking cement and the screw can only come loose if this locking cement is broken by the screw been removed, tightened, loosened, whatever.
There is no real inherant engineering fault here, its just a basic locking issue, and who is to say the units which did fail were not tampered with, disassembled and reassembled by someone who did not use / know to use locking fluid on reassembly.?
This is more a "people issue" and not an engineering one in my opinion.
Later production runs have the screw sealing into a type of teflon locking thread which means it cant work loose on its own and no locking fluid is needed.
Lets also be realistic, there are thousands, if not tens of thousands of these units world wide,99.9% of them have never even leaked let alone failed, some of the branded units sold into Europe have a CE approval code, this has not been withdrawn, and the units are still sold without recall, - to the best of my knowledge the units are only recalled from the USA market.
I am with you fully that a seperation on a new diver would not be pretty, no doubt about that at all, but the chances of the lock screw falling out and the halves seperating without at least a long period of warning leaks is highly unlikely, I dont believe we should just ignore the issue at all, if you have a unit ensure its correctly serviced, check for leaks (like any good diver would) if it starts leaking during a dive, abort the dive and remove the swivel issue. This is just good dive planning.
