SEQUIM — Five Port Townsend students overcame many hurdles in building an underwater research craft donated to the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory’s marine center in Sequim.
It took two years — twice as long as scheduled.
It cost a lot more money than they originally thought it would.
And the final product bears almost no resemblance to the design they came up with at the beginning of the process.
In other words, the project ran into the same problems professional engineers grapple with every day — and that’s the point, said Gary McLuen, a Port Townsend man who among other things runs an engineering internship program that allows students to explore an interest in math and science through hands-on projects.
The students are David Kunz of Northwest Academy; Andrew Haines, Daniel Schulz and Cody Blevins of Port Townsend High School; and Brahm Lichty of Mar Vista.
They designed and built a remote-operated vehicle, or ROV, that can be used to observe what’s going on under water at depths of more than 300 feet in such places as Puget Sound, Hood Canal and the Strait of Juan de Fuca.
Starting from scratch
The work included designing and making components using a computer controlled machining center, learning to weld aluminum and calculating stress and pressure requirements needed for deep water diving.
“This is an amazing feat, to take high school students and build a sophisticated piece of equipment,” said Dick Ecker, director of the marine sciences lab.
“You’re our future scientists and engineers . . . We will make a lot of use of this piece of equipment.”
He noted that the ROV — named “Puma” by the students — cost $15,000 to develop, but would’ve cost 10 times that much if the lab had done the work.
The ROV is about the size of a small sled. It is connected to a computer by a long cable and controlled using a trackball.
It has video cameras mounted in the front and rear, and carries instruments that collect data such as the levels of dissolved oxygen in water, vehicle depth, water temperature, turbidity and pH levels.
