A second life for low pressure seats

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Jordi

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Looking for opinions on the reuse of low pressure seats. I have a few second stages for which service kits are hard to find or not available (Davor Vyper) but even Scubapro R190 or R380 have flat poppets/low pressure seats. If the back side is still flat and unmarked it should be OK to reuse them simply by flipping them. Any thoughts on that?
I understand that the plastic material can have lost its properties and be degraded but the main reason for a leaky second stage seems to be that the low pressure seat no longer holds the seal.
Looking to hear from the many experts out there who certainly must have thought about this and most likely experimented with. Best regards

Jordi
 
Looking for opinions on the reuse of low pressure seats. I have a few second stages for which service kits are hard to find or not available (Davor Vyper) but even Scubapro R190 or R380 have flat poppets/low pressure seats. If the back side is still flat and unmarked it should be OK to reuse them simply by flipping them. Any thoughts on that?
I understand that the plastic material can have lost its properties and be degraded but the main reason for a leaky second stage seems to be that the low pressure seat no longer holds the seal.
Looking to hear from the many experts out there who certainly must have thought about this and most likely experimented with. Best regards

Jordi
Here you go

Seat for Scubapro 2nd Stage scuba gear pa.no: 11.108.101
 
I flip and punch new ones from rubber sheet
Happy-diver is reading my mind and my follow-up question is if the material makes a difference. Will any rubber work as long as the thickness is appropriate?

Jordi
 
Happy-diver is reading my mind and my follow-up question is if the material makes a difference. Will any rubber work as long as the thickness is appropriate?

Jordi
I'm using duro 70 silicone sheet for SP 108/109 and Aqualung Conshelf seats... seem to be working well so far. I know others that are using EPDM.

respectfully,

James
 
See post #3 & #7 for Awap's magic punch and seat material.
Generic LP seats - Where to buy?

For my personal regulators I've been using:
This material McMaster-Carr
and this punch: McMaster-Carr

Plenty of us have been doing this for years.

However, to answer the OP's question-yes you can flip the seat provided it's not too old/hard/brittle-but that is something I would only do in the field when I did not have access to a new seat. Imagine you're on a dive trip somewhere, you need a seat and the one you have installed has already been flipped.
 
See post #3 & #7 for Awap's magic punch and seat material.
Superhelpful comment couv. Thank you.
A pity that here in Europe almost everything is metric.
I find EPDM as 1.5 mm thick sheet. 1/16 inch is about 1.6 mm so it may do
The 9/32 punch is 7.1 mm. Again I can find 7 mm punches so that may work as well.
I will experiment a little.

Would it be too much to assume that these are standard measurements for many second stages?

Agree on your comment on flipping the seats, keep it for emergencies or waiting for a new seat.
 

That seat is pretty standard in size. I hope I'm giving credit to the right person here- @Zung put together a couple of documents with the relevant information. Look under the column "home made."
 

Attachments

  • 2nd Stage Seat All V4.xls
    66.5 KB · Views: 125
  • 2nd Stage Seat All V4.pdf
    246 KB · Views: 199
Flip the Seat is important part of reducing waste streams and helping to save the planet.
Couv is right though, if you are traveling somewhere where you don't have spare regs or a spare seat, then make sure your regs are on their first side. If you are local and have access to spares, then it doesn't impact you much. I do it all the time, along with the punch and sheet of rubber, but I have found that it's too small for some regs and I should probably order one size larger punch.
 
https://www.shearwater.com/products/peregrine/

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