I'm Aslak David Schøyen. I fly an ROV in the North Sea: inspection, maintenance and light construction work on the seabed. Home in Drøbak I design and print my own boat and fishing gear, and take on commissions for businesses who need something nobody makes already.
The founder
Aslak David Schøyen
ROV pilot and inventor
A part can pass its test and still fail. When it does, it is usually the geometry, not the material.
Aslak flies an ROV offshore in the North Sea and builds his own products between trips. The fishing gives him the problems, the subsea work gives him the habits: measure before you assume, and sell nothing you have not used yourself.
Technical DNA
Schøyen is not about printing as much as possible. It is about understanding why something failed, finding the real fault and choosing the fix that will actually last — whether that means rebuilding the original, modifying it or designing a new part.
A failed component is not automatically a component that should be thrown away. First it is opened, measured and fault-found. The real problem may be a bearing, a contact, corrosion, a bushing, a cable or one weak detail in the geometry.
An electrical trade background means the mechanics are never viewed in isolation. Power, motors, wiring, sensors, controls and fault-finding can be treated as parts of the same system when a maritime problem has to be understood.
Take apart, understand, repair, measure, design, build and test. CAD and 3D printing are tools in that chain — not the starting point. If rebuilding the original is the better answer, that is the answer.
ROVs, boats, fishing, cold, salt water, poor visibility and equipment that has to work in real use. The broad technical background is deliberately focused on problems on, beside and below the water.
Aslak David grew up in an environment where things were opened, understood and repaired rather than simply replaced. His father shares the same broad practical approach, and his brother brings deep IT expertise. It is a close technical circle to challenge ideas with — without turning Schøyen into a general-purpose service company.
Schøyen remains focused on the sea, boats, fishing, ROVs and subsea work. Cars, houses and other fields are experience in the toolbox — not what is being sold here.
Capability
A list of what I have is inventory. What matters is what happens when you hand me a problem — and I can show you that, because every round is dated.
A problem on deck. Measurements off the actual part. Material chosen for salt, sun and frost. Printed the same evening I am home. Put to use. Changed. As many times as it takes.
Send measurements, a photo with something familiar beside it, or just the broken piece. You get a price and a date back — not a range.
A part that no longer exists?The hook guard took three rounds before it stopped popping off in the cold. The rail holder took two. The log carries the build date, the test date and what went wrong between each version — including where I was wrong.
The proof14
ideas held back
They are held back because the mechanism has to be protected first. Norway has no grace period on patent novelty — one photograph is enough for the option to be gone for good. Keeping them off the site is not secrecy for its own sake; it is the only way they can come to anything.
If you need to assess them, that happens under agreement.
Working depth · 024 m
The job
An ROV is a remotely operated underwater vehicle. It hangs on an umbilical from a vessel, and the pilot sits in a container on deck flying it on screens and sonar — often hundreds of metres down, where nobody can follow.
Fig. 1 — Work-class ROV, principal components
The work is inspection, survey, light construction and support for drilling and offshore wind. The manipulator turns, connects, cuts and lifts. All of it through a camera, with current pushing on the vehicle and an umbilical that must not tangle.
Twelve-hour shifts, on rotation. When something fails mid-operation, nobody is bringing out a spare. You fix the one you have, with what is on board.
That is the habit he brings home to the printer: watch how a part actually fails, and redraw it so it does not fail the same way again.
Before he was an ROV pilot, he built his own. A small underwater vehicle, made at home from scratch, by someone who wanted to see what was going on down there.
He demonstrated it in a swimming pool. That demonstration got him the job — not a certificate, but a thing he had built, that worked.
Which is why this site is about prototypes rather than plans. It has worked once already.
He did not get the job because of an application. He got it because he had built a submarine and shown that it worked.
Descent · 058 m
No slide decks. The problem shows up on board, and the fix gets tested in the same place.
Something breaks, slips or takes far too long. On deck in the North Sea, or in the boat at home. I note it down on the spot, with a photo and a couple of measurements.
Measurements come off the gear itself, not a catalogue page. Gunwale, reel, tube diameter, bolt spacing. It all varies, so the model is built parametrically and can be changed when it does not fit.
Salt, sun and frost decide it. ASA where the sun gets at it, TPU where a part has to take cold without cracking, PETG for most of the rest. Carbon-filled nylon looks strongest on paper, but it takes on water and loses stiffness, so it stays out of anything that lives wet.
First print the same evening. Printed holes come out a few tenths undersize, and the layer lines are weakest across, so the part gets turned until the load runs in plane. Then the clearances are adjusted until it sits right, usually five or six rounds in.
The part goes in the boat or in the toolbox and gets used like anything else. Salt, frost, sun and rough handling. If it does not last a season, it is not finished. Only then does it go up here.
Open water · 118 m
Not a catalogue. These are problems someone actually had, and what I did about them. Some became parts. Some are still sketches. A couple turned out not to be worth solving.
Seabed · 152 m
Offshore you fix the part you have, with what is on board. I brought that habit home to the printer — and what started as spare parts for myself is turning into a product line.
Ascent · 214 → 000 m
Leave your email and you hear from me when a new case is documented and when the next period ashore opens for orders.