DIY Fluid Goggles

[unirdna]

First off: Doug, your cleverness is only outshined by your charity. And you're not too dumb yourself, Mike .

This may very well be the most innovative thread I've ever seen. With each post.....something new.

Now I have a question .

When chosing a traditional mask, I prefer one with a black silicon skirt. The reason for this is because I hate any other "kind" of light getting in, other than "good" light. Peripheral, bent light is disorienting to me; thus, my dislike for masks with a clear silicon skirt.

Do you find that a lot of ambient light is hitting your eye while wearing fluid goggles? If so, does it bother you? And if so , have you considered 'blacking off' all parts of the google that are not directly in front of the lens? Or even using a small piece of opaque plastic piping to create a tunnel of light to the lens?

Again, Great Thread!

Ted

 

[DGP]

Ted,

I don't know if I can be of any help. Remember that we made these for one purpose only; to set a record and in that case, peripheral vision, even if a glare issue, was a good thing.. Martin wants to know if there is anything near him; safety diver, boat, whatever. The vision off the lens isn't really "vision" to speak of but you would notice a mass nearby.

Also, we don't dive for fun using fluid goggles. Martin much prefers the mask for diving and wants to do all of his records with a mask until it becomes impossible for him. So far 93m+ with a mask and he can still equalize both mask and ears so it is not an issue yet.

I too prefer a black, not a clear mask for any type of diving so in that regard I might want to darken the goggles BUT remember that the field of view is much narrower than with a mask so maybe you'd want all the peripheral data you can get.. I dunno...

Try it both ways and let us know!

Doug

 

[bevan dewar]

Hi, I have a question for anyone about which goggles/mask to use. What exactly are the factors to consider when choosing goggles in which to mount the Edmund Optics lenses? Are there any swimming goggles that have both lenses parralell... thats not quite the word...on the same plane? if you know what I mean. Would this help. I have recently seen a swimming "mask" (I think it was a Mares but could be wrong) that had a flat glass lense for each eye but no nosepiece. The frame was rigid unlike swimming goggles so the lenses would not shift relative to each other. Would this be prefferable to swimming goggles? cheers
bevan

 

[Pezman]

Bevan,

Worth a try. I think that if you glue the lenses to the faceplate (on the inside, convex side pointing inward towards your eye) it should work. There are optically clear epoxies, which are used to repair windshields, that should do the trick. Alternatively, if you want to make stand-offs, 3/4" PVC pipig looks like a good candidate as part of the solution since its inside diameter is just shy of 22mm

If it works, that would be the most elegant mounting system proposed so far and if the frame has some give (like a regular mask), then it would take care of the issues that are raised by small, stray bubles in the mask -- the mask would collapse inward a tiny bit as the bubbles compressed, rather than sucking your eyeballs out of their sockets like a rigid structure would.

As an alternative, you could just use a regular mask. Flood it, pinch off your nose w/ a clip and viola.

My efforts are on hold for a little while due to some other recent purchases .

 

[phreak]

Hi everyone,
I read this thread with great interest.
And I am now the proud owner of a pretty decent pair of fluid goggles (or do we have to call them something else?)

As Doug said these lenses do the job excellently, the tricky part is getting them in the goggles.
I used a 10mm dia acrylic thick wall tube cut lengthways and used a power tool called a dremil (a tiny high speed drill) with a lens shaped grinding wheel to create the correct cut out.

I did a 3D autocad drawing to figure it out if anyone is interested
and if anyone wants the .dwg file let me know

Thanks and regards

Andre.
Guernsey

 

[Longfins]

Andre,

You can also export your drawing to .wmf (windows meta file) or .bmp format so people without autocad can view it.

Welcome to Deeperblue.

Peter S.

 

[phreak]

ok here it is i hope

 

[bevan dewar]

hi all. i'm going to try attach photos of my goggles. they work well, i can read my watch clearly and see people 50m away underwater(in a pool). the main problem is that i see double as the lenses are not alligned properly with each other. this could proberbly be fixed by filing down the plastic lense holders in a way that changes the angle of the lenses. or i might just use a lense over one eye and close the other. Although i'm pretty happy with them i'm still prefering to use a sphera with noseclip.(i can take it to 30m before i have to touch my nose to remove the noseclip to equilise the mask)
the plastic pipe the lense clips into is taken from a garden hose fitting. it has a 1 or 2mm narrowing/bottle-kneck which the lense butts up gainst. one of them. i used was the perfect diameter and the lense cliped in securely without the need for glue. the other one (of another brand i think) was a hairs-with to wide and so i used a bit of superglue to anchor it. i used a bit of superglue on the rim of the pipe to attach it to the inside of the goggles lense. i did a bit of experimenting to get the lenth of the pipe right, taking it out a few times to file it down. its about 9mm now, making the flat surface of the lense about 7mm of the goggle lense and just beyond the reach of my eye-lashes. bringing the lense closer to the eye seems to offer better near-field vision at the expense of the far-off(or is it the other way arround?). experiment to find the best compromise.
conveniently, the pipe comes with 3 holes down its side which allows water to enter.
and incase you cant make out from the photo i have put the lense with flat side closest to eye, convex side facing out.
dont know if this is the best method but i think it might be easier than the method using two half-pipes with notches cut into them. cheers
bevan

 

[bevan dewar]

o.k, that was the hose-fitting that you get the pipe from. now for the goggles

 

[phreak]

Ok so here is my system

You may make up you own minds
i have to say this is fiddly
I did all the design work using the information I had

1. As little as possible in contact with the lens( anything in contact would become part of the optic and change the characteristic)

2. Clear materials to allow maximum light in

3. As little material around the front of the lens for maximum vision

And I added a few

4. Removable for cleaning

5. They have to look neat not like tractor engineering.

and I came up with:

 

[phreak]

And here is a photo of the finished item

 

[bevan dewar]

phreak, or anyone else, have you fixed the double-vision problem? in theory it must be fixable but i'm guessing it will take a lot of experimenting, filing and re-glueing.
bevan

 

[phreak]

Hi
You get double vision from the lenses not being parallel to each other.

The first thing to check when you buy the goggles is if the front faces are flat inside and out, then put them on and get a buddy to check if the front faces are parallel to each other across with a straight edge (up and down wont matter as you can adjust this)

If the are nearly there then you can adjust them later with the nose strap and the head strap

I also put the goggles on and marked the centre of my eyes by looking straight out and drawing a cross with a chinagraph pencil to get the rough lens position

To check the lens angle in the goggles dry, put on a bright light and look at it through the fitted lenses and you will see one big dot (hopefully)
or you can adjust to get one big dot with the straps and moving each goggle on your face

hope this helps

Andre.

 

[bevan dewar]

thanks andre. i've improved on my design. i changed the goggles because the old ones were a bit flimsy. with the new goggles i found it worked better to attach the optical lenses to the outside of the goggle lenses. i hadnt tried this configuration on the old lenses but i think it might not have been as effective, because the lenses on the new goggles sit closer to the eye. the double vission problem has also been easily fixed. one final improvement i made(after taking the photo) was to remove the rubber skirts on the eye pieces. might not always improve things but it does seem to make it easier to adjust the allignment of the goggles on the face ie they sit where you leave them better.

 

[jacobwaerness]

Contact Lens Fluid Goggles

Dear Readers!

I have read this thread with great interest, and it has inspired me to participate in developing the concept of fluid goggles.

It seems to me that our eyes get far-sighted in water. Contact lenses, as the other lenses mentioned in this thread, should be able to compensate for this phenomenon. Do you have any experience or knowledge if you can use contact lenses to get perfect vision in fluids?

According to my reasoning it should be possible if you get the right plus-power lens. Contact lenses are made in powers up to +30.

If this works I imagine that you could get cheap fluid goggles with excellent field of view.

Any inputs are appreciated.

Jacob

 

[efattah]

Ordinary soft contact lenses have almost no power underwater due to the fact that their refractive index is close to water. The net power underwater that you need is about +45 to +60D. However, to my knowledge bausch & lomb soft scleral contacts have a +200D power outside of the water, which drops to +45D or +60D in the water.

An almost identical discussion thread as this one passed along mark barville's 'freedivelist' e-mail list back in September 1998, during the early days of the fluid goggles (which, at the time, we called 'saline goggles'). I was repeatedly flamed on the list for 'stupid and irrelevant ideas' which had 'nothing to do with diving.' People thought that the fluid goggles were a 'joke' which 'couldn't possibly work.' Even famous trainer Rudi Castineyra (trainer of Yasemin & Tanya), didn't believe that the goggles would work until I sent him a prototype!


Eric Fattah
BC, Canada

 

[bevan dewar]

an update on my ever improving design: i was having a small problem with bubbles collecting between the lense of the goggle and the optical lense i had mounted on the outside of the goggle lense. didnt know whether to make more holes in the black plastic 'pipe' i had mounted the optical lenses inside, which would allow a freer flow of water, or to totaly seel it up, perminently trapping water inside.
what i did instead was remove the pipe till i had a normal pair of swimming goggles again, the with a red hot screwdriver i melted a nice neat hole in the front of each lense, of the diameter of the plastic pipe. i then wedged the pipes into the holes, securing it with a bit of superglue and plumbers putty. a new photo wont show much cause they look much the same as before, except they are now missing the plastic lense that previously came between the eye and the glass optical lense. the optical lense can now be cleaned from both sides. and not having to look through two lenses seems like it may even have improved the optical characteristics slightly.
bevan

 

[bevan dewar]

an update on my ever improving design: i was having a small problem with bubbles collecting between the lense of the goggle and the optical lense i had mounted on the outside of the goggle lense. didnt know whether to make more holes in the black plastic 'pipe' i had mounted the optical lenses inside, which would allow a freer flow of water, or to totaly seel it up, perminently trapping water inside.
what i did instead was remove the pipe till i had a normal pair of swimming goggles again, the with a red hot screwdriver i melted a nice neat hole in the front of each lense, of the diameter of the plastic pipe. i then wedged the pipes into the holes, securing it with a bit of superglue and plumbers putty. a new photo wont show much cause they look much the same as before, except they are now missing the plastic lense that previously came between the eye and the glass optical lense. the optical lense can now be cleaned from both sides. and not having to look through two lenses seems like it may even have improved the optical characteristics slightly.
bevan

 

[wdaf]

Hi,

i want to order some lenses at edmundoptics.com, but the link doesn't work.

http://www.edmundoptics.com/Buy/Car...fm?itemid=10371

whats the exact name of the lens?

thx

wolfgang

 

[JasonWelbourne]

http://www.edmundoptics.com/onlinecatalog/displayproduct.cfm?productID=1747

Item Description = " LENS PCX 20 x 20 UNCTD TS "
Item Number = NT45-237

I found it by the itemid in the original URL that didn't work. "itemid=10371" I have some spare one's I never used if you would like to buy some of those.