made a big splash at Oceanology International in London last week at the company’s Power Forward event, with the celebration of the company’s 70th anniversary, and the launch of an all new high amperage subsea connector series, the 225 Amp BIRNS Meridian line.
The Meridian line, a robust, custom engineered dry-mate connector series is open face rated to 6km, and is well-suited for battery packs and thrusters for crewed and uncrewed subsea vehicles that require high amperage power transfer.
Select sizes are already being DNV type-approved for 6km rated crewed submersibles. BIRNS Meridians are compact, and feature several pin configurations, with more in design for release later this year. The M40 pin configuration has a single 85 square millimeter/3-000 contact. Both standard and reverse gender versions are featured in the series, and all withstand reverse pressure, too, and can be installed into both dry and oil-filled canisters.
The new connector line has a number of exclusive design features to create ease of use and mating, including a tactile alignment index ridge and arrows indicating the primary key position. The receptacles also feature a blue color band on the shell, which allows users to have a strong visual indicator that a connector pair has been fully mated.