Tips needed for pinch flat avoidance

[blue steal]

One way to avoid pinch flats on your wing/bladder is by not handing your gear up to the DM at the end of your dive.
They drag your set up over the gunwale and cleats causing pinch flats. Know as it happened to me.

 

[cool_hardware52]

A couple general points. Pinch flats are not unknown with doubles, but are far less common than with single tank rigs.

Why? For starters there are simply several orders of magnitude fewer divers diving doubles. Most divers diving doubles aren't on "Cattle Boats".

The key reason, IMO however has to do with what constitutes the basic "rig" When the dive is over for a doubles diver they spin off two wing nuts, remove the back plate and harness, and the wing and send the tanks to the fill station. The plate and wing are now *separate* elements.

This is *not* the case for most single tank rig designs, particularly when STA's are used. At the end of the dive the single tank divers slides the tank out of the cambands and leaves the STA bolted through the wing and plate. That Wing ends up living attached to the plate for transport, cleanup and storage. This is when most pinch flats happen.

This is what lead me to design DSS single tank rigs to allow quick removal of the wing with no tools required and zero loose parts. That allows the wing to be transported, cleaned and stored separated from the plate.

Tobin

 

[dmaziuk]

One way to avoid pinch flats on your wing/bladder is by not handing your gear up to the DM at the end of your dive.

If they're changing your tanks, give 'em a hand. On boats with tank wells along the gunwale, 2 cambands tend to suck and tank change becomes a 3-hand operation. They'll appreciate the help, too.

 

[Eric Sedletzky]

Gummy Urethane? I've never encountered any gummy urethane. I have seen various rubbers become gummy with age.

The vast majority of bladder damage is via impact, and we did a *bunch* of controlled impact testing ~10 years ago. A weighted rod with a 3/4" ballbearing in the end was dropped from repeatable heights on to a hardened and ground steel "anvil"

We tried many different combos of shell material and bladder materials.

The bad news is the very best performers would suffer damage at fairly modest impact velocities, (energies) meaning pretty much all wings are subject to pinch flat damage.

The good news is some combo do perform better than others. IMO it is ability of the materials to attenuate the impact energy that determines the resistance to impact, not tear strength.

Thicker, pliant materials consistently performed better than laminated textiles, i.e. 400-800 denier fabrics laminated to a ~.005" of urethane.

The reason why DSS continues to use true duplex weave 1050 ballistic nylons for shells is not because 1050 is very strong (it is robust) but because the duplex yarns and basket weave make the material think and sort of springy in cros section. That's the same reason we use .030 straight urethane films for bladders, .030 can attenuate more energy.

Think about shooting a handgun into wet phone book, or into a piece of .125 thick steel. The steel may be "stronger" but the phone book stops the round for simple reason the wet phone book attenuates the energy and the steel sheet fails.

Tobin

The clear urethane that looks like gum rubber, that’s what I mean. I got a pinch flat once, bungeeing my assembled rig into the corner of my P/U bed and didn’t notice that part of the wing got folded over the plate and squished under the rubber bungee. Unzipped the wing and repaired the bladder at the dive site with a quick peel-‘n-stick urethane patch from West Marine. That was 8 years ago now. Patch is still holding firm.

 

[John Bortle]

Thank you all for your insight.By the look of it,disconnecting and separately carrying my wing seems to be the best option for me. Fortunately I do have a DSS BP and wing so that makes matters easier.

 

[lexvil]

Here’s what I did, bought a dive rite XT wing and sold the DSS wing, although I switched mainly because of the center hose location, other than that the DSS is great. The XT comes with a lifetime replacement guarantee (I hope to never know if it’s legit) and it’s shorter so it just worked well for me and I chose to no longer worry about things like this, take reasonable precautions and go on with diving.

 

[EireDiver606]

I try to keep it inflated but my Eclipse Wing keeps deflating about 25% (eyeball guess) after a day or so. Is this normal? I tried to include a photo but I’m not sure how to do it here on scubaboard.

It might be because I was storing it horizontally with the SS plate on top because I wasn’t thinking... I’ll store it right, with the plate on the bottom and see if it changes from now on.

Also, I’m going to Malta in June this year and I’m packing the bare essentials in a pelican 1510 box. The wing just barely fits in it and I’m worrying if I should dissassemble it to reduce the chance of the halcyon plate tearing or pinching the wing. Should I worry about this