Hooray for Olympus, but boo for the design of the 5060 UW housing

[Janos]

Firstly hooray for Olympus. I will only be getting Olympus cameras from now on, as about a month ago they sent me a free, gratis, replacement 5060 for one that had decided to stop working after taking photos in the rain.

However, my housing has just broken. This is the second housing I've had, and the second to break in the same way. Basically the PT-020 housing has a detachable lens port. This is held on by two tiny, tiny, acrylic protrusions and two latches. To cut a long story short, one of these protrusions broke off underwater. Fortunately the water pressure kept the lens port on, but once on the surface it just dropped off. This could have been quite bad as I was just about to chuck the camera in the mask bucket at the time.

The camera has survived, but I've had a go at epoxying the housing into one piece. I'll let you know how I get on.

Janos

[Simon A]

Janos,
If I recall correctly the solvent to use to solvent weld acrylic is chloroform (spelling?). If it's a clean break and you've got all the bits, solvent weld the part back together using this. Then in the left over chloroform melt some acrylic pieces until you have a consistency of epoxy, then use this mixture to build up where you feel you need extra material.
HTH
Simon A

[steve2056]

I have had Olympus housing before (C-2020Z, PT010) and that started cracking up. I still use Olympus cameras but always go for Ikelite housings. The Olympus ones are just not up it.

[simonmort]

The reply i had from olympus europe on pt27 housing cracking( after 30 dives), was that the material may have hair line cracks appearing ,this is the nature of the material used and doesnt mean the item is faulty ?.