Liberty rebreathers manufacturing - behind the curtains

Introduction – Why We’re Lifting the Curtain

Curious how a fault tolerant closed circuit rebreather (CCR) is born? This behind the scenes tour reveals exactly how we turn raw titanium, aerospace grade electronics and decades of dive experience into the Liberty CCR. Keep reading to discover the precision machines, the obsessive testing culture and—most importantly—the people who make Liberty the gold standard for technical diving.

“The whole point of opening our doors is to prove that every nut, every line of code and every assembled unit can be trusted when you’re 100 m below the surface.”
– Aleš Procháska, Co founder & CTO

What You’ll See in This Walkthrough

• Rapid prototyping in our in house R&D lab
• Five axis CNC machining of critical housings
• Electronics assembly in an ISO class clean zone
• Big Bertha depth simulation tests to 300 m
• Real diver feedback loops feeding the next software build

Brand Transparency: Engineering Obsession & Passion for Safety

Liberty is built in our own state of the art facility just north of Prague. Controlling the full value chain means we can guarantee:

• 100 % traceability of every component—from oxygen sensors to O rings.
• Redundant electronics philosophy: no single failure or even multiple failures can disable the life support loop.
• CE & EN 14143 certification for temperatures 4 – 34 °C and depths to 100 m (Heliox 10/90).

Our factory was built from what was originally a carpenter's factory, which was in a desperate state. When the owners Aleš and Lucie bought the building in 2010 they carried out a thorough and costly renovation that turned a complete ruin into a modern, clean and functional world-class facility.

Ales Procháska is a precise and technically minded person. His motivation was to create for himself and his speleo diving community a device that can work in all conditions and can be relied on not only on the way to the far ends of the cave, but especially on the way back. He has equipped the robust and cleverly thought-out design with a unique fully redundant control system that is fail-proof.

For inclusion on the European market, but also as proof of Liberty's quality, we have undergone a CE certification process. Laboratory tests in ANSTI in the UK, Military Technical Institute in the Czech Republic and later in our own fully equipped laboratory prove that Liberty can be relied upon in all circumstances. Module D certification proves the quality of our processes and annual audits keep it at the highest level.

Inside the Factory: Step by Step Manufacturing Walk Through

1 | Design & Prototyping

Our engineers model every part in SolidWorks and validate it in finite element simulations before 3 D printing functional prototypes within 48 hours. Rapid iteration lets us fail fast on land—not in the water.

2 | Material Sourcing & CNC Machining

• Titanium & marine grade stainless steel are delivered with mill certificates.
• Five axis CNC mills achieve tolerances to ±5 µm on the Liberty head and connectors and all other milled components.

3 | Electronics & Sensor Integration

The electronics are stress tested and their functionality is verified. Oxygen sensors are batch checked in a proprietary pressure chamber that correlates each sensor’s mV output to partial pressure—allowing the Liberty to reject ‘lazy’ cells automatically.

4 | Assembly & Functional Testing

A specially trained and experienced Divesoft technician assembles each unit from the ground up. Once the final quality control checks are completed, the technician passes the unit for final boxing, following a detailed 95-point checklist.

Each unit has its own station and as it grows, so do the entries in the assembly and service log. It's a kind of "birth certificate" of the unit.

There is every component that is assembled into the device, its serial number and every operation that is performed with the unit is recorded. In the same way, all data is entered into the digital system. In this way, every operation and component that has ever been inserted into a particular unit can be traced back perfectly.

Quality Control & Testing Protocols

Depth Simulations on Big Bertha

Liberty spent countless hours on ‘Iron Man’ inside Big Bertha, a custom pressure chamber capable of simulating 300 m dives. Design of all the components, work of breathing, the sensors, solenoid timings and PPO₂ controls were logged at 50 Hz so anomalies could be spotted long before the design was finalized and the unit reached its final state.

Redundancy Checks

Two complete, isolated control boards run in parallel. During testing we force fail each board; the surviving board must maintain loop control within ±0.05 bar. If it can’t, the unit is quarantined for root cause analysis.

Name Role Quote Aleš Procháska Co founder & CTO “If we can’t measure it, we redesign until we can.” Ondřej Zouna Chief fitter “I treat every head like it’s going on my own back.” Martin Topš Designer “Redundancy is great, but knowing why a component failed is better.” Jakub Šimánek Factory Trainer “My favourite sound is no bubbles at 90 m.”

How Our Philosophy Shapes the Product

Safety First

Dual independent power supplies and full sensor voting keep you breathing even in the case of multiple failures.

Modularity

• Backmount or sidemount conversions use the same core electronics—future proofing your investment. Relentless Innovation
• Recent firmware updates have introduced Closed Cylinder Detection, an integrated splash checklist accessible directly on the handset, and the unique bailout CCR mode, among a range of other hardware and software innovations.

Real Diver Feedback Loops

We work with a large community of test divers. We actively communicate with them, and we pull dive logs, correlate them with user interviews and schedule sprint reviews; 70 % of firmware revisions originate from field feedback.

Ready to Dive Deeper?

• Book a factory tour: Walk the production line in person. • Have questions? Contact our team or schedule a demo dive. Your next great adventure starts with gear built by people who dive as hard as you do.

Author: Jakub Šimánek