I made an electric rocket engine - how is this possible? 

As a TIG welder… I can’t help but think this is sort of like one giant TIG torch just contained in a chamber with a small exit..

What you are essentially producing is a plasma arc cutting torch. Research that for more info on insulation, consumables, and shape of the plasma.

You should try finding a cheap used TIG welder that still has the high frequency start that works, that way you could get rid of having to move the graphite electrode to strike the arc. Not sure if works, but to me it sounds like a idea worth of testing. Just subscribed a few days ago, love your R&D work!!!

There is something crazy in the sentence "Guy on RU-vid builds working arc jet". Remarkable!

You can get 200 amp rated pre-drilled copper inserts for plasma cutters from your local welding supply store. They are drilled to create a swirl of the plasma as well. (I don't know if you noticed but you created a plasma cutter while you were building a rocket motor) Another commenter suggested a Tig welder system and this is a great suggestion because you can get tungsten electrodes in sizes up to 10mm very easily. You can shape the tip of the tungsten to create several arcs and a larger plasma "ball" in the throat of your nozzle. You will appreciate the ability of tungsten to endure high temperatures and not deteriorate so rapidly while you are testing your designs.

seeing the mach diamonds never gets old

My hero is building a thermal arc rocket motor! This is so cool, we live in an amazing future.

Producing thrust with the power of ELECTRICITY! Great work

This cool, I built an arcjet on basically a dare from my professor in college. It was heavily based on the that one from the diagram in your opening

I love how meticulously you approached this and steadily the eliminated/mitigated variables & problems as they became known. Excellent engineering form 👍🏼👍🏼👍🏼

Love your vision. Keep going. It's people like you that change the world. Don't let anyone's criticism put you off your dream.

just found this channel, thank you so much for actually including data and comparison over pure air that other youtubers love to omit (looking at you integza) Also the schlieren photography is stunning!!!

Well done! You could maybe try to use parts of a plasma cutter. In essence they are arcjets working with air although not optimized fot thrust. But i think that's something you can solve with ease. And they could pump out multiple kilowatts of power without a problem

I have some pure tungsten rods of about that size you could try using as an electrode. And I would love to see more of that lathe, looks like a badass DIY machine.

You can use a permanent magnet outside the casing to make the arc rotate inside the nozel. That should fix some of the wear issues. Love your videos :)

A collab on this with @integza would absolutely rock!

Carbon rods like you would use for an old school twin stick Arc torch would probably work fantastic for this.

have a look at blowback start plasma cutters, they're essentially what you tried to do with the graphite feeder but with a purely mechanical system rather than a sevo

You know what would be fun? If you implemented a compression region via tapered wave-guide fed by a microwave oven transformer to further ionize the air into an atmospheric plasma. This way, you can ditch the integrated machined nozzle, and install a magnetic nozzle or solenoid of some sorts since you already have the power supply for it.

I wonder if it increases thrust to somehow slap some magnets on the engine. If you can get the lorenz force to either add to the exhaust velocity or pinch the plasma radially magnetically to bump up its pressure before passing the throat it might increase the thrust.

This is so cool! Please keep this content up😊

Very cool. Keep experimenting!

You can preheat the propellant. And just for a quick question, what will exhaust from an aerospike nozzle look like in schlieren imaging?

you will want a ring magnet around the exit cone as close to where the nozzle tip as possible. this will cause the arc to travel in a rotary manner around the inside surface area of the cone making an even plasma path and ignition.

Nice. Also appreciate the detail & editing 🍻

I would personally like to see you build a version using magnesium wire as the electrode just looks

You cable ties being little wrenches is cute

Didn't even play 5 seconds of your video, title was enough. Subbed

as a cnc plasma technician I could probably give you some pointers on those consumables

This is awesome dude

To stabilize your arc you can use an inductor (with low voltage 30-1000V DC power), it enables you to make large arcs with lower voltages and currents, try to use the highest inductance possible before the resistance loses on the inductor become more than a few percent. To start your arc you can use that same inductor to generate a high voltage spark by adding a few turns of wire and discharging a small high voltage capacitor onto that wire with a triggered sparkgap. Also many talk about using an arc welder for this but such power supplies are limited to less than 100V and a few kW of power, and while many electrothermal thrusters work in that power level I think for ground tests at high pressures a large one can be better specially with voltages above 100V. If you can get your hands in an electric car battery that could work as a good power source, using a resistor made with long aluminium strips immersed in water (so water acts as a heat accumulator and gives you a few seconds of operation) you could limit the current to a safe level for the battery while still having tens if not a couple hundred kW of power for several seconds. Obviously this is quite dangerous!

8:56 they use ARGON, which are used in most of electric space engines.

for almost a year now I have been making concepts upon concepts for a rocket engine that doesnt use propellent but eletricity! its good to know someone is activately like me trying to desgin an eletric rocket engine! I wont be sharing my design here because of people possibly stealing it.

When using spark plugs, consider using spark plug wires, and spark plug caps.

Aw the gasket cried as it failed. Poor little engine. Shock diamonds are always cool though. Uses: A home made hypersonic wind tunnel? Nice.

Btw i hope you bring your gokart or other fun loud stuff to rocketday :) im hoping to take my daughter this year

That is so cool

Maybe if you create a magnetic or electric field that attracts the gas. Basically attaching an ionic thrust stage. This might due two things: Let you reduce power consumption and increase longevity. The field strength probably can be made much higher and requires very little power. Basically create a solenoid at the end. If it accelerates the particles enough this could be beneficial and shouldn't be that complex to do. You'd just have to makes sure that all the polarities are correct. It would likely have to be quite long and flare out to have enough time to accelerate the particles to increase their velocity. E.g., if the graphite had iron powder(or some other magnetic substance) within it then this might help but might create new problems. Also, to fix the starting arc issue you can pulse it with a high voltage that will temporarily ionize the air. It might take some time to find the right curve for optimal results but it shouldn't be that hard of a problem. Probably just starting off with a very high voltage and quickly dampening it.

Thanks for sharing, science is fun :)

Arc gouging electrodes are made to handle extreme heat under air pressure. They ablate way less rapidly than your graphite rods. Should work fairly well. …or some kind of platinum plated tungsten rods. That’s got to be expensive though.

We goin to mars with this one

i want to make a song from all the test clip audio. so many fun sounds!

You could try with different design. Making melting coil and putting inside some high melting point metal which could heat the air. So you don't burn out electrode because this way you heat up metal with changing magnetic field. Try using nitrogen because would less react with metal that is heated up.

You should go to harbor freight and get a plasma cutter. Everything you’ll need is there. You’ll just have to use that brain to reconfigure it to work as you’d like.

Interesting. Was thinking if you used copper rod electrode, the copper would vaporize and become fuel which creates fuel/air combustion ignited by arc. Vaporized aluminum electrode could also be used as fuel. You would need high current to vaporize metal. Try using microwave transformer with microwave capacitor & diode voltage doubler circuit, creating 4000v pulsed DC 50-60hz.

0:15 : That's cool!

Electrochemical reactions are probably easier to achieve. Some chemical reactions are so violent, they remove the electrons from atoms, releasing even more energy. So an electro-chemical fission motor could be possible...

It would be cool to see this with helium. If the party balloons tank pressure are too low for this maybe nitrogen or argon are not the best but are still lighter than air. In addition it's less corrosive so the graphite electrode model coud work.

This was awesome!! You have the future there, and I was wondering if you ever thought about using a pure rod of silicon in place of carbon. It's in the same family as carbon, the crystallogens. I think it might give you a longer burn. If ita a matter of money, just make some sand thermite and video that. Probably easier to buy though, but it's just an idea. Your ideas look better than mine though, so... just subbed love your stuff and I can just imagine how good that must feel to know you did that, and probably not even half my age. ❤

This is very impressive, I'm just lucky if my car starts.

Very impressive, although low in impulse its perfect for precision thrust vectoring on a satellite. Hmm arcget on a cubesat might be interesting.

Graphite dust maybe and different more or less conductive fuels

Oh damn, that's a crunchy spark

So its basically a repurposed plasma cutter

Dam I thought of something like this a few years ago. However my intent was to convert mass directly into heat energy on a more controlled setting

Very interesting, I have never really heard about this kind of engine before. Have you considered using microwave transformers as a power supply? They can supply much higher currents in the range oh 100s of mA at 2100V. You can connect up to four in series or add a voltage doubler to two of them to get a higher voltage. Alternatively have you thought about using a TIG welder? Those welders already have a high voltage system to strike a low voltage high current arc and might work in this engine.

👍 And also Schlieren😁🐈🐾🐾

Now you know why spark plugs have silicone boots over them

I wonder if using nitrogen instead of air would reduce the consumption of the electrodes. The oxygen in the compressed air, combined with the arc heat source, may be burning things, no?

From my understanding of ionic engines this is basically an ionic rocket engine, without the grids. Adding grids would increase the thrust produced, the plasma channel has some interesting videos on the matter.

would you ever consider using an a HHO generator to create the gas for the arc jet?

Yes he did it This has been my design

I have a 240v 85a plasma cutter that uses 90 psi compressed air and cuts for hrs before needing to replace consumables. I wonder if any of those parts would be helpful to you? I buy the replacements on Amazon 40 sets @ a time. If you want to look up the parts to see search hypertherm 85max consumables. The electrode has a tungsten core, inserted in a thick copper rod

ATTENTION PLEASE! Your graphite electrode han not been eroded or used up, it has broke up. That is due to your lack of knowledge about graphite. When you buy graphite rods, they are soaked of some sort of oil. Before to use them as an electrode at high temperature, you have to heat them gently over a a time of 5 minutes or so, to bring them to the red hot. You can put them on a gas stove or whatever. You'll see that they will smoke and catch on fire. After a while the oil will be completely expelled and your electrode will last very much longer! Now your electrode explodes because the oil trapped in it, vaporizing, cracks the electrode with the built up pressure, from the inside. Now you know, try again.

Interesting. What you do produce by passing superheated steam over hot carbon?

Bravo

"I made an electric rocket engine - how is this possible?" It's not, you made a plasma cutter. Try again.

have you ever thought of using a tungsten carbide electrode

The audio is a bit of an issue. I think the voice should be louder so I don't have to chose between hearing the words, or blasting my ears. Otherwise very good video, reminds me of Styropyro.

Try using plasma cutting torch with pilot arc and a cheap amazon welder. You can use neon transformer, some diodes and capacitors to strike an arc easier. Graphite circle can be used as 2nd electrode, it shouldn't wear as much

God bless Scott Manly.

Try to use 2 microwave oven Transformers,two secondary in series 4kv 1-2Amps.With higher current you can get really stable hot arcs at this voltage....But danger it can kill you.

Have you looked at HAN as a mono propellant?

VERY VERY Cool!!!

Have you considered a flame to start the arc? Also do you need an arc? It looks like you’re not getting very much benefit over the non arc. The high strangeness in plasma comes between the dark and glow modes. Good work. Much ❤ Love 🌎🌏🌍☯️⚡️ World🌞Peace

Cool. Subscribed 🤙

Are the sparks good or bad? Is this for a drone? or for some kind of satellite?

I wonder if its possible to build a hybrid btw this and a traditional rocket

make an applied field mpd, cus it would be cool and also they aren't that complicated, also i just want to see someone do that and i don't have money so i cant do it myself :(

Where are you based @? Currently developing a similar propulsion except with plasma

Plasma cutter giant scale

How is this any different than a plasma cutter?

Isp de 50 en 1 atmosfera ,eso en el vacío cambia

am one of the first 100 views to view this but very cool

You are burning through carbon electrodes because your feed gas is compressed air, it contains 20%-ish oxygen and is actively burning your carbon rods at an extreme rate. The cheapest non-oxidizing feed gas, assuming you want to keep using cheap carbon rods, will be nitrogen which can be cheaply purchased as liquid nitrogen (assuming you have an LN-rated dewar, the gas company won't fill anything but a rated dewar), you just calculate the volume of your air tank and convert the expansion rate of LN to the pressure you need to obtain the correct volume of LN you need to add to the tank, then let it thermally equalize.

if you can build a system that uses slow moving high compressed air instead of fuel, you have unlimited atmospheric propulsion system (well the battery would be the limit. but no fuel. pure electric "jetengine") also try a rotating/spinning arc to reduce wear and unpredictability p.s.: you have a new sub p.s.p.s.: slap a afterburner on it =D just for gags question. does the size of the combustion/ionizing chamber matter? would a bigger allow it to build up more pressure?

In my opinion, a microwave system that will heat the air directly should not be added to this system.

Tungsten Electrodes?

Tungsten

this looks like a Ion drive thruster

Try a tungsten electrode.

I think your mass flow rate is way too high and the ambient atmosphere hurt the specific impulse.

Почитайте книгу - "Иностранные авиационные и ракетные двигатели", 1964 года. Там есть краткие описания электрических и плазменных двигателей. Но эта книга на русском языке.

Why not inject water into the arc and produce steam

how much thrust was it putting out?

So why not use a tig torch tungsten rod for an electrode, or a bundle of them. And venturi is the proper word for your propellant orifice I believe, not throat. Try propane oxygen lol. A diesel fuel injector with liquid propellant with pure oxygen added between the venturi and the electrode. High pressure directional vapor jet plasma.

Just be careful of breathing in graphite oxide or graphene oxide

You have a plasma cutter.

So it's powered by graphite?then it's like graphite jet engine not electric.

More gas more electricity just like a ark welder so imagine a shit ton of gas just blowing out well it’s gonna have a hard time igniting just like air and fire safest bet I can think of is something to improve the energy to greater then what is it and see if that works or create a system that the has the repellent come out at key spots instead of all around it btw I’d be surprised if what I say works I dropped out