The story of SWiFT

A year of development by Valeport’s Research & Development department led to the creation of an end cap for SWiFT that allows users to easily operate the instrument by turning the switching ring. The success of this solution lies in its simplicity.

“Our starting point was thinking about how SWiFT would be used. It had to be easy to use with cold hands while at sea. The switching ring we developed has a very positive feel about it. It turns through 90 degrees and you can feel it click into position.

“We needed the action of the switching ring to feel right. We couldn’t use springs because the instrument is used under water. We didn’t want to use screws in the assembly as we needed to avoid the risk of users opening up the instrument. Screws also use up valuable mechanical space. Our solution was to use nylon to lock the end cap into place. The next challenge was to get the tension just right – not too loose or too tight,” explains Jay.

The end cap features lights to show when the instrument is switched on, when the Bluetooth is on and connected and to indicate the battery’s level of charge.

“The inclusion of light-up icons on the end cap offered up another difficult mechanical challenge that required clever assembly,” says Jay. “When you pick up the product the first thing you notice is the switch ring and lights, so a lot of thought went into getting this right during our development phase.”

One of the first developments was to increase the depth of operation to 200m. In 2018 this increased further with the introduction of a higher specification pressure transducer to allow a deeper range of 500m across the full SWiFT range.

Demand from the dredging sector for easy to use, reliable instruments to measure how much silt is disturbed during dredging led to the introduction of SWiFTplus Turbidity – an instrument with the sound velocity, depth and temperature profiling capabilities of Valeport’s original SWiFT design, with the addition of optics to measure turbidity. SWiFTplus Fluorometer, a profiler which can be supplied with either a Chlorophyll, Fluorescein, Rhodamine or Phycocyanin sensor was also developed.

“The development of our SWiFTplus range and introduction of optics into the instrument required careful thought from the R&D team and the creation of new circuit boards,” says Jay.

Guy Frankland adds: “The safety of our people and the wider community has been our paramount concern and it is testament to how our team have all pulled together in this challenging time that we’ve been able to continue with the development of this new instrument and launch it during the pandemic.”