Sort of. I ordered two of my latest chamber designs in plastic from shapeways.com. The cost is very inexpensive and even though i can really fire them, they do help to visualize the design. Its also useful for fitting up the chamber to other components like the test stand.
The picture above is the 50 lbf scaled up design that I did on request. The material is Shapeways' Frosted Ultra Detail and it came out very well. The regen passages are very crisp and well defined. The only drawback is that they are still full of powder. I actually mailed this part over to the individual who asked about the feasibility of scaling up the thrust.
As you can see in the picture below, the 50 lbf version is comparable in size to my original chamber, which is only 12 lbf. The original chamber was fairly conservative in size, and so the results of testing and additional analysis indicate that the chamber volume can be quite a bit smaller for a given thrust level. The other plastic model is version two of the 12lbf motor - notice the size difference. This part was printed in Shapeways' Transparent Detail material and the results were not quite as good. I'll be using Frosted Ultra Detail in the future.
1 comment:
Wow, your 50 pounder is barely bigger... Should have far better T/W, good enough for actually launching something. How much thrust do you think you could produce with your current propellant system?
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