epdm has always worked for me
epdm has always worked for me
I prefer White Gold for my rings!
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The thing to remember is that any oring will burn under the right conditions (same guys who discovered the leaky cylinder that passed hydro got bored one day and put this to the test), so you need to look at what is given off should that happen. Viton is a good choice for oxygen service, but when it burns it does give off some nasty gases. EPDM does not seem to be as bad when it burns.
I use the el-cheapo o-rings you can get at the local hardware store. They don't last as long as the other o-rings out there, but they are so cheap that you can replace them on every dive and never even think about it. You can get a 100 pack for just a few bucks.
By the way, they still do last a long while, but I am really careful with my gear.
Ah yes, but the right O-ring is always the answer. The last thing I want is a cheap O-ring ruining a good dive. Or better yet, failing at a critical time of the dive, on a critical piece of gear. That old rule of coming up as many times as one goes down comes into jeapordy. If one is willing to scrimp on something as small and cheap as an o-ring, how much more on something more expensive. God forbid, it is a life sustaining piece of gear.......Oh wait,!!! thats what scuba is all about!!
It has never been a problem for me in the past. It is also something most of my dive buddys do. I have only had one o-ring fail on us the entire summer, and it was operator error that caused the problem. It happened before the dive and of course I had plenty of extra.
By the way, do you really think the hardware store o-rings are not as good as the ones from the dive shop? My thought is the "standard" o-rings (like the ones from Trident) that you buy at the dive shop are IDENTICAL to the ones from the hardware store. I bet they are most likely made in the same factory, but have different packaging. Of course as soon as the SCUBA name is added, the price goes up.
Now if you are not using standard o-rings then that is another thing altogether. I still have about 60 dives on the same hardware store o-ring without any problems.
And don't fool yourself, ALL o-rings will fail, even Papa Bear's White Gold ones. It is really not a big deal because the large majority of the time this happens before the dive and is corrected.
Although I know viton are supposed to be more durable, my understanding is they are a bit of overkill for scuba, especially if you service your gear regularly. And then there is the point brought up by Bama that they get kinda toxic when they go poof.
Amtrosie, isn't it true that viton is not the common material for o-rings in aircraft applications, even in the presence of 100% O2? I thought I read that it is more common to see EPDM?