Do professional divers prefer aluminium or steel scuba diving cylinders, or is it a purely personal choice? The choice of scuba cylinder material is ultimately a personal factor. Although there is some informed reasoning that can help determine that choice.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The biggest influencing factor is the diver’s buoyancy and weighting<\/a> needs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Cold water divers typically utilise dry suits as exposure protection. Dry suits are typically very buoyant and demand a considerable amount of ballast (weighting<\/a>) to sink.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Drysuit<\/a> buoyancy also remains constant regardless of depth. This is because more gas can be added to compensate for compression. Whereas thick wetsuits<\/a> will compress\u00a0substantially\u00a0<\/em>at depth. In doing so, losing a large amount of positive buoyancy. For that reason, wetsuit<\/a> can leave the diver utterly reliant on their BCD to offset their weighting<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Rather than add large volumes of lead weights to their belt, many drysuit<\/a> divers opt for steel cylinders. As such, the cylinders become a part of the diver’s weighting<\/a> strategy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n This is why you’ll hear many cold\/temperate water divers automatically suggest that steel tanks are better. However, in doing so, they’re showing inexperience in the demands of other environments. Also, it shows a lack of safety-focused consideration on diver weighting<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n