A Funny thing happened
on the way to 2,000 ft.

We found ourselves at Deep Sea Power & Light. They manufacture high-end deep sea rated cameras and video lights. The kind of gear you use with underwater robots to film the Titanic, six miles down. They have a great facility. They also have a pretty slick pressure testing tank. It will test to 10,000psi.

We like to get our light heads rated around every 3 years. Our claimed "certification to 500 ft" is real, in fact, the last time we tested our single beam HID head, we tripled that number to 1,500ft! Today's challenge would be our new Double HID Head. We were concerned about the new dual lens being so wide. What kind of pressure would it take? Would it buckle, crack? How good were the o-rings. All the stuff we think about so you won't have to.

After the business informalities were taken care of, they lowered the "Double/Double" into their 10" cannon looking pressure tank. The first test would be to 160 psi, just over what we test every light at our facility. (You divide the psi by .45 to get the depth rating). All good at 160. No suprises here. Then we brought it up to 250psi, Ok, then 380psi, OK and up to 500psi or 1,100 ft. Still good. No creaks, no water penetration, all good. Someone says, "Let's drive it hard, at least match the HID single beam." Ok. "Let's". The very next test passed 675psi or 1,500 ft. Even the Deep Sea guys were starting to look closer. "This thing's hanging all right." the Tech said.

Then it happened... We got a little greedy.

We could all see the dial close to that elusive 2,000 ft mark. It would be great to have a 2K rating! So in went the head with a planned run to 900psi. On the way to 880psi, we heard a rather erie thump inside the 6" walls of the tank. It felt like a light earthqake. The big analog dial started to drop and we found our breaking point. Somewhere in the neighborhood of 1,933 ft.

On the Deep Sea certification paper it says 800 psi (or 1,777ft) and to be quite honest, we'll take that rating any day!

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