Upgrades

In response to the +/-3 thousandths that I found in run out on my mini lathe, I took executive action. I played golf, I pushed all my responsibility onto China since that's where the lathe is from and continued convincing myself that would solve the problem. Turns out this didn't solve anything. So I stepped up and decided to-do something.
I gutted the whole lathe to address my bearings. I upgraded to roller taper bearings. Took a week to get them via Amazon prime ($22) but they got here eventually. After chilling the spindle in the freezer and heating the bearings everything was eventually banged into place with a deadblow hammer and some chunks of wood. Run out is now +/- 1/2 thou and the machine just seems completely different. Smoother quieter tougher... great upgrade. I would attribute all of the change, solely to the bearings but I also bolted the lathe to a 60 lb piece of 1" inch plate steel.... effectively doubling the weight of the machine -might- have something to do with it but I will leave that to the muses to speculate. Fresh coat of paint (another upgrade from the ugly gree) gives it at least 5 more hp.

Slow grind

Been building one day and one dollar at a time. Infrastructure is my new game. Couple grand in but still much to be done. Lathe and mill bought. Cylinders for brazing aluminum acquired. Materials ate in. Designs have been designed. My new rocket is going to be a 250lbf flyable model. It's a bit of a living mess for the time being but more to come.

Still at it!

Between work and life, time comes sparingly in waves. Yet, I grab hold of the loose straws of time that I get and forge progress! Sounds epic... if the follow up isn't 'yet very slowly'. More rockets are coming soon, hence I have saved enough for a milling machine, but here is some of what I have gotten done in the last year:

CNC Progress

Wall Mounted Computer

Lathe Upgrades

Smoker out of a 30 gallon water heater

And I'm back at it!

It has been a while since I have been able to get back into building rockets. After my career move down here to Cape Cavaneral, I have been rebuilding my infrastructure. Currently, my spare bed room in my apartment is has been converted to a rocket research lab and I have been aggregating all the tools that I need to continue development.

To date I have been able to equip myself with:

Grizzly 7x14 Lathe that I am upgrading with an arduino based power feed that will read the RPMs and move the tool at prescribed rates to give the best finishes and certain threads per inch.

90A flux core MIG Welder that I converted to DCEN with a 100 amp bridge recitifier, 94,000mF capacitor bank (40 individual capacitors), and a 40 turn torodial core inductor. The stock AC welder would barely even weld 1/8 in steel and even then it was very sporadic and popped slag//bb's all over the place. Since the conversion, the welder just sounds mean! A constant sizzling bacon sound with up to 1/4 in 4 thousands gap penetration with the settings only turned up ~3/4 of the maximum. I got the welder on sale for $80 then put $30 worth of electronic into the upgrade and its performance now is EASILY comparable to some of the $500-600 machines I have welded with in the past.

2 x 1000 psi regulators. One of which is oxidizer hardened.

I have also designed and started to build my thrust stand that will be able to host a variety of sensors, high speed loggers, and data acquisition instruments. I have been learning machine code and the fundamentals of optimization to develop my data loggers. So far I can get a sample rates nearing 5-7 microseconds which should be plenty of resolution for future testing.

My latests efforts have been focused solely on the building of my 3 axis CNC router. It will serve as the backbone for roughing out blanks and cutting out my injector plate stacks. Eventually I will upgrade it to a 4th dimension on the router head and install a 4th axis spindle.

It will be primarily steel construction. Bed size is 32 x 21 inches made of 2in square tubing with 1/8 thick walls and the red gussets are 1/4 in steel plate. Currently, I have the base frame and gussets made. I also have all of the linear rails, bearings, 1-1/2 hp router, stepper motors, stepper motor drivers, all 1/2"-10 acme lead screws. Its just a matter of time before I can finally get this put together.

Welding Machine and welding table

Lathe Lab Setup

Thrust Stand Front Frame (19x19 inches)

CNC base frame and completed parts

Assorted Rocket Stuffs



Sorry for the explosion of pictures but I should be able to keep a more regular update schedule now that I am getting into the swing of things.

HolliStar V2 Rocket Engine Tests Updated

Working at Cape Canaveral is interesting to say the least. SpaceX and Delta launches fly directly over my building a few times a month. I am about 3 miles from the launch pads. Talk about loud....



Finally, got all of the test runs together in one place. After the rapid disassembly of V1, I had over 25+ full 10 second burns using the HolliStar V2 without any major malfunctions other than a melting o-ring. I can't wait until I can get back to building rockets! I am building a website and should have it up soon. I will keep you updated!

The Pause of an Era

The month of June has been a very eventful one. Most significant is my career shift. I got a new job in Cape Canaveral working on rockets...imagine that! I packed up and moved down so now I am located in the rocket capital of the world! Sadly, this takes me away from the machine shop where I spent the past few months slaving over the tools building rockets. For the time being I will have to put my rocket engine building on hold until I can find a new home to get back to work. It does give me time to start developing a flight ready design with the knowledge I have gained.

The final tests before I had to see my baby go. These were the best/loudest tests yet so at least I left off with a wooooooosssshhhhhh and not a bang!
Fortunately, my rocket has a good home where it will serve as a demo model for Advanced Engine Technologies back in Dayton. I did manage to get a regenerative chamber designed and hastily machined so the next big step in that build will be to get an injector plate drilled up. So if there is anyone in the state of Florida that has access to machine tools please let me know and we can make
some sparks fly! I have a youtube playlist with all of my engine tests that can hopefully help inspire other to keep up the good fight! Please continue to share and offer me some feedback so that the next one will be even better!

This is the 100 lbf regeneratively cooled chamber! Coming eventually! I'll have more pictures as soon as I get unpacked.

V2 up and running

After a few days of runs, we finally got the engine to run correctly.  Some of our tests burn over 10 seconds which is about as much as I can squeeze into the tank. There is a YouTube play list with all of the test runs including some good mach diamond shots during day 3. HolliStar Liquid Rocket Engine: HolliStar Liquid Rocket Engine: http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLPs8paqlFtFy6ad9Riu9larwPlQGtC6eC