4.0 Design/Build Examples
The beauty in the art of innovation is that the power of knowledge gathered over time allows for informed decisions moving forward and with the benefit of projected outcomes. Among the most challenging opportunities I’ve had over the years is figuring out exactly what to do with this gathered information about rebreathers. Again, it may not be perfect, and it may not be consistent with everyone’s design philosophies, but it does represent a twenty-plus year investment that holds value for me personally. Over this time, I’ve struggled to figure out how exactly to capitalize on the design/build projects of several units that were for my own purposes. I've given thorough consideration to becoming a 'rebreather manufacturer', a reseller of components or specialized assemblies, and even focusing on amassing intellectual property. No options have emerged as the best of circumstances, but one thing I recognized as a good opportunity was to write about it all.
As I prepared this material, I figured the best I could do was use the information to cast a bit of a projection towards future opportunities if the community were to apply some of the aforementioned design principles within a few interesting contexts. In this section, I am presenting some of the more specific design/build projects that I’ve undertaken and place emphasis on feature sets that make the system more or less applicable to a specific utility application of rebreather technology. Could others’ design philosophies carry through with similar design/builds? Yes, though my hope is that you as the reader will recognize both the consistencies of the aforementioned design principles and overarching simplicity from system to system. As I touched on very early, this standardization in design philosophy among and between systems is very much needed to open up rebreather use at a much broader scale. It will allow for ease of training, ease of switching from one unit to another unit, and an easier path towards innovative applications of the technology, particularly within an occupational context.
The following design/build projects are not in chronological order, rather presented from simple through progressively more complex. Let’s take a closer look.