Twin Manifold Question

[Bob S]

Can someone explain what is meant by the feature captured o-ring when describing a twin manifold? Also for the money what is a good twin manifold (with isolator) to buy Dive Rite, Sea Elite, Thermo, X-Scuba etc ? Will be using with S45's, S72's, HP80's or A63's. Appreciate your response!

Bob S

 

[LowVizWiz]

You can get your answer here: Manifold discussion

Divers Supply in Florida City was blowing out Sea Elite manifolds a few weeks back, I'd give them a call.

Hope this helps you.

 

[Tortuga68]

Also http://www.scubaboard.com/forums/ta...rotating-captured-o-ring-manifolds-brand.html

 

[DA Aquamaster]

There are many more brands of manifolds than there are manufacturers that actually make them and over time companies have switched the manifolds they sell and manufacturers have changed the manifolds they make so it gets a little confusing as to exactly what is what.

I have had Sea Elite, Halcyon, Diver Rite and Thermo barrel style manifolds and never had an issue with any of them. I have also had OMS face seal style manifolds and again not had any issues with them.

In general either style is more than strong enough - provided the tanks are properly aligned in the bands and the bands are tight.

The barrel o-ring style manifoilds are adjustable which is nice as they allow adjustment to individual bands. The face seal style manifolds are stronger, but they need to be as they are not adjustable in lenght and will be under more stress if the bands are not perectly matched in terms of center to center distance with the manifold. It is pretty much 6 of one and half a dozen of the other.

There is potentially more o-ring wear with the barrel style manifold, particularly when divers leave the crossbar loose so it can rotate, but there are also always at least 2 o-rings, so there is redundancy.

The face seal o-ring manifold is an outgrowth of the older style manifolds that used a brass coned type of compression fitting. It looks more like plumbing than scuba equipment, but if the mating surfaces are clean, the seal is excellent and will never leak. Plus the design allows for a few degrees of less than perfect alignment so in many respects it was a better approach than using a face seal o-ring where a couple degrees of misalignment may mean a less than 100% contained o-ring.

Consequently with a face seal manifold, you want to be sure to tighten the manifold connections before you tighten the bands. That is different than the approach used with barrel style manifolds where you snug up the bands slowly while ensuring the tanks remain alinged and that the isolator freely rotates by screwing it in or out to keep it in the sweet spot as the bands are tightened.