First white ABS shells!

[Charles (Upstate NY)]

I fired up the beast tonight and made some replacement shells for the stock Minelab Explorer coils which tend to leak at the beach. I designed this shell for Beachcomber who has several coils that have leaked on him.

Anyway I thought I would post some pics as these are the first white ABS shells I have formed. It takes a while longer to heat up the sheet but it forms quite well. These are .060 inch thick ABS and pretty tough.

http://www.detectorgear.com/pics/whiteshell.jpg

http://www.detectorgear.com/pics/vacshell4.jpg

Miss nosy just had to get in the picture!
http://www.detectorgear.com/pics/catcoil2.jpg

[Siliquae_Sid]

Nice mouldings Charles.

When you say "leaked" I take it you mean that the resin separated from the plastic housing, thus allowing water in between.

Have you thought of "keying" the surface wit hMEK just prior to pouring the resin? I wondered if this would give a "tacky" surface for the resin to bond to. Might need to go to .75mm plastic though.

[Charles (Upstate NY)]

No actually...I should have explained further...the stock Minelab Explorer coils have an inner shell and a outer shell. The windings are placed in the inner shell and potted with resin, a drain wire is wrapped around and shielding paint is applied. This coil is then placed inside a larger outer shell suspended on 3 foam pads e.g. the inner coil is not encased in resin, there is a sizeable air space surounding the coil. The outer shell is sealed at the seams however some leak to the point you can hear water sloshing around inside.

The shell I made in this post is a replacement, its possible to cut away the Minelab outer shell and place the inner coil in my replacement shell, then pot with resin to create a trully waterproof coil.