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Hello Grant, maybe I little tip : Is it possible to mention the metric dimensions also? Centimeters, millimeters for the drills and layers of stuff inside the rocket? ;) People in Europe will be thankful for that ;))
*Hey guys, hope you enjoy the upgrades! The rocket building, and recovery wadding, tutorials are coming next, then I'm on to something completely different. Have a great weekend ... and Happy Halloween!*
I could do experiments and builds like this all day, sucks to go to school and not even come close doing awesome stuff like this. Great channel you inspired me to follow in your footsteps.
As I have been ramming my own engines for some time, I have a couple of tips on this. 1. Add a pinch (about 1/16 of a tsp for your quantity) of red iron oxide. It acts as a catalyst to enhance the burn rate and increase thrust. 2. Place a piece of masking tape over the bottom of the engine. It helps to contain the clay. Pull it off just before drilling the hole. 3. Use rubber o-rings on the wooden dowel to help control the fluff of the composition when ramming.
If you drill a lengthwise hole in the ramming dowel, then put a small dowel in the center of the motor housing you can ram the fuel in and remove the small dowel to make a core burner engine, fill the core left by the small dowel with black powder. That way the whole core surface area burns at the same time. Much more power. Also water putty makes great rocket nozzles, and you can mold a power enhancing nozzle into it also.
Thanks for commenting this. The original instructions have me disappointing results. After adding your modifications it's almost exactly like the video if not better
I used to fly Estes rockets, I bought one that was about 4 feet high and was said to reach 350ft, I thought I could do better. I designed a 1st stage that would hold 5 "D" Estes motors, two firing first, then two firing when the 1st ones burned out and finally igniting the last single rocket when the 2nd rockets burned out. While designing how I would get the rockets to chain ignite my friend calculated the dynamics of the flight. He came back the next week suggesting I should read his calculations before going any further. His calculations came to a max speed of Mach 1.2 and 10,000 feet high! I decided that needing CAA approval to fly a balsa wood and cardboard rocket probably wasn't a great idea and scrapped the project.
You are doing what we did as 14 & 15 year olds 35 years ago. We discovered the benefits of incorporating black powder into the chute discharge as well as the stage separations. We made a 15 foot rocket with over 30 motors in various stages. We didn't know if it was successful because it went so high we could no longer see it. After a few minutes we spotted the three big chutes indicating that everything went as planned. I miss those days. After incorporating some black powder into launch, stage separation and chute deployment we went to a 0% failure rate. Before that the success rate for 100% everything, was at about 85%.
Magnificent instructional video on the sugar rocket motor. I have built rockets many years and just got interested in building my own motors, since it is getting more difficult and expensive to purchase commercial engines.
+apples apple Every ad on my channel is skippable. Unlike most RU-vidrs, I never enabled forced ads on my videos. If that's happening, get a screenshot and send it over, and I'll contact RU-vid about it. Thx.
Warning: by heating up the potassium nitrate, it may decompose into potassium nitrite, which reduces its effectiveness. Please heat it up at approx. 100 degrees Celsius
If you're making successive markings over a distance, you should always measure from the same point and not from the previous marking: the latter will cause mistakes to add up
Hey Grant, another amazing video! Would you still happen to have another MOT laying around, that you could make into another melter? I have recently been working on we-winding a MOT to melt metal, just like yours, and can't seem to get enough of the videos on them. It would be great if you could make another video on it, because I am sure people would love that. Thanks!
+Panagio Tsaou Well, Diesel for example explodes by just compressing it, they don't need sparks in a motor. I bet that mix would also explode if you compress it enough.
+Matt Merrill The stuff's specifically sold for muzzleloading rifles, if all it took was a little ramming a lot of civil war era soldiers would have lost their hands.
we used to melt the mix and cast motors. The fuel was pored over a tapered piece of wood which when removed left you with a burn chamber. You would lose sight of them. Fast too
hey, when I was in my late teens, I was trying to get my niece into science with rockets. But even though the "rocket starter switch" cord provided was long, and we launched it INSIDE my car, with the door open, I gust if wind blew it over just as it was launched and it came right at us!!! So I then learned how to make wireless firing systems to get more distance when launching. I've been able to make: -infrared firing system ( about 50ft ) -radio wave ( about 300ft ) -cell phone ( limitless, I guess... ) If you ever want to make a video on how to make wireless firing systems. I made 3 schematics, 1 for each type, and provided them to my local hobbyshop. And will gladly provide them to you. Ironically, the cheapest to make is the cellphone version...
Dude, make *A BIG* rocket, an overpowered version, instead of a small rod, make a rod like 2 cola cans tall and diameter If you do such a majesty, it will be very fun to watch it loosing itself in the sky. It wouldn't be thaaat expensive, but you're the enginer here to know if and how :)
What I like about this project is that it is not only very affordable, but easily scalable: You can use longer and/or wider PVC tubing with more propellent in it and/or add multiple tubes to your rocket to get even higher altitudes! I wonder how big of a tube you can use before the laws of physics make it impractical? (i.e. Can an 8 inch diameter PVC pipe contain the resulting internal pressure and would its added weight not be worth the effort?) Very nice! JW3HH
"and when you get close, slowly drill the rest of the hole by hand, The instant you see a little bit of white powder at the tip, you know you have arrived, so dont go any further!"
I don't know about self ignition, but it's the carburant of the rocket, and black powder get enhance greatly by this coumpound. the sugar is the oxydizer and slow the burning process. a 50/50 mix would be a slower combustion than 65% saltpeter 35% sugar.
Can you increase the "white mix" propellant section for a higher flight? Maybe make the delay section longer to compensate? Or are these specs calculated out specifically.
What are the measurements to make a smaller motor, say a "C" or a "B", something that would only go roughly 500 feet? I don't have to drive as far for a smaller motor.
I would totally do it but getting potassium nitrate in Germany isn't as easy as it is in the US. And importing "stump remover" from the UK or the US from Amazon isn't really cheap and would certainly cause problems at shipping
One thing you might consider doing would be using a piece of PVC with threads on both ends, and then you could make a proper nozzle that would use the fuel more efficiently and still be able to refuel quickly. Just be sure to use something highly temperature resistant on the lower set of threads so nothing fuses together when it gets hot. (I'd have to give some thought as to what to try, but teflon might be a good start.)
This brings me back. 15 years ago when I was 11 model rocketry was my thing. I had tons of estes rockets a-d size, but that was when walmart used to carry them in stock. My fave was the two stage d rocket kits. Ahh those were the days......
So... can you reuse the pvc pipe to make a new rocket or is it damaged? Or how many times can you use it before it is damaged? Just wondering as this seems like a fun project. Also, if you used a cardboard like tube would it burn up or would it last long enough, because maybe it would be cheaper to make single use rockets that way.
Please can you make more rocket videos? I think they are the best videos and I want to see something bigger or just more different when the normal Randomizer rocket! I really hope you read this and maby you can do it....? Keep doing the best videos on RU-vid! Bye
That was great, and I never launched anything (well, maybe my mom when I colored my brother with permanent markers). 6:59 was brilliant, it brought it altogether for me!
not really we used to play with matches to make explosions with a nail and a wood block, it takes 3 to 5 to make a good pop, he's not going to blow up the rocket just pop the parachute out
Attention new viewers:For this project,a system that uses fractions,is more convenient.I mean,for example,the delay burns at 1/16 of an inch per second. I usually defend the metric system but I never thought I'd have to do the opposite.
That makes 0.15875cm per second.So,you need 0.64375cm for 5 seconds. See?If you need inches for one step,you also need it for the rest of the project's steps.
I'm gonna make a rocket as soon as you have temhe vid on the randomizer rocket. But:-)I live in NL. NL sucks because there are so many laws. But screw it I'm just doing it:P
+Jonathan Eppinga haha, heb het al een keer gedaan in de uiterwaarden hier. zolang er niemand om heen is en je bent niet gevaarlijk bezig zie ik geen probleem
What do you do to keep the pvc from lighting and or melting? In my experience a heat shield casing of cement or plaster is the only way to keep the fuel from lighting the pvc; ie why the world uses wax coated craft paper, fire retardant pressed cardboard or aluminium tubing.
I love the comments on Imperial v metric below. I don't know how long the US can hold out from converting. This was a nice vid and makes me want to give it a go. My question is how big can you go, as these look a bit teeny and I would plan on putting my rocket on the moon.
Bentonite clay can also be purchased from Homebrew or Winemaking supplies, as it is used as a "fining" (clearing) for wine and some beers.... it is inexpensive, finely powdered and pretty much water free from these sources
That is what the commercial motors use. Yes, it works well. But, an E motor is about as big of one you would want with that propellant because of fracture problems getting worse the bigger it gets. Also, there are differences, black powder engines are end burners(from one end to the other), while sugar as well as APCP(ammonium perchlorate composite propellant) are core burners(from the inside of the core out). Core burners have an advantage in that they do not heat the casing until they are almost burned out and are generally preferred for re-loadable motors(which are available all the way up to M commercially and homebrew even bigger, at least up to Q)
