Blogs

Launch of 1kg sugar rocket - 1km flight

New design, new body, a bit advanced fuel. Turn up the volume!!! slight issues with the start that I have to figure out - but could not be happier - almost everything worked. By gps, 1km distance was travelled. Next test - will improve launch platform and will use slightly smaller diameter stainless steel tube + integrate camera.

April 4, 2020

fun weekend with RNX Propellant and hilarious sugar end burner launch + electronics

At friday got really bored at work, called it a day and went to the garage to prepare some fuel 1) Cooked another batch of RNX propellant (oh this is fun one) 2) Cooked finally a decent batch of kno3/sugar/Fe2O3 end burner fuel After trying out different ways of cooking kno3/sugar for more than year, I believe I have finally mastered cooking that propellant type (Im talking about at least +500g batches, small ones are easy). Got most of the moisture out, packed it really well without any bubb

January 18, 2020

Endburner test

Long time no seen. Had a birthday and had to spend time with guests and preparing the event, so unfotunately could not get to garage But, meanwhile I have done lot of research and finally did what everything said it's not possible - huge thrust endburner from kno3/sugar! Though it needs more work as video below demonstrates. But for now I'm dealing with TOO MUCH energy and too high temperature that burns through stainless steel casing. For that I made slight changes to the engine: 1) To g

December 15, 2019

Static fuel testing - like WHAT!?

Last 5 tests have completely failed. Massive explotions. So clearly there was something very wrong with my design and decided to investigate it a bit more. It always seemed to me, that well published 65/35 % of sugar and KNO3 is too aggressive and with too quick burning speed. And my tests have actually proved it now. Plus, I got extremely good information on how the grain actually burns and the place of ignition is highly important!!! Take a look to these two videos below. Both grains are

November 24, 2019

Completely redesigned engine, preps for the new static test

After going through the calculations and previous test simulations then something was bothering me. I could not get the pressure under control. So after studying more my data I found out that my pressure and thrust curves were inverted and this is wrong. After careful modelling this is the new data I am using for the new test: As you can see thrust and pressure are now much more better than in prev. test. This means slight changes in nozzle design and also propellant length and core diam

November 7, 2019

First successful test after 6 CATOs

Hi I'm not native English speaker so please forgive me my grammatical and vocabular mistakes I've spent months on reading and studying rocketry and 3 months ago decided to give it a try. At first, it really seemed easy - take KNO3 and Sugar, mill it, pack it and fire. Well, the first attempt actually worked and my miniature rocket took off. But after that I failed to repeat it - and I could not understand whats wrong. Usually there was no thrust - lot of smoke but that was all. Then decide

November 3, 2019

WillowPineAndBoom's Blog

Ball milling clumping

Hallo to all pyros again! i have a problem with the ball mill! when the metal starts to be fine it sticks to barrel and i don't have any further grinding efficient! Is anyone there that know what it could be? I don't have humidity here especially now at summer! please help guys because i become crazy with this thing! + the barrel is from pvc not rubber and i use chrome steel balls half inch and quarter inch!

WillowPineAndBoom

August 21, 2019

Nils' Sugar Rocketry

Rockets and Smartphones

Once I wanted to record onboard video of my rocket flight. I had Sony Xperia Go smartphone which I didn't use anymore because it was outdated. It's video recording was still quite OK, so I decided to use it as video camera. I was a beginner and for several reasons the flight failed. But I still got some video: The Sony Xperia Go was very tough and it survived the crash. Second time my rocket was much more powerful and it landed 500 meters away from the launch point. I was not able to find

nils

April 15, 2019

Homegrown Oxidizers

Homegrown Oxidizers Part Thirteen WSM As we continued our cell preparations by filling the titanium tubes spot-welded to our electrodes, we encountered a major setback. The thin-wall titanium tubing was seriously compromised by the spot welding process and leaked out some of the lead-free solder through the spot welds as we were trying to fill them with the copper rods and solder. When things cooled down, we held the electrodes in our hands, and with very little force, could break them off t

May 7, 2017

Homegrown Oxidizers

Homegrown Oxidizers Part Twelve WSM Making Sodium Chlorate There are several advantages to making sodium chlorate over making potassium chlorate… and a few disadvantages. Potassium chlor-alkali salts are less and less soluble as their oxygen level raises. Sodium chlor-alkali salts, on the other hand, are more and more soluble as their oxygen level raises. What does this mean? When potassium chloride is converted to potassium chlorate in our cells, the chlorate, being less soluble than th

May 7, 2017

Homegrown Oxidizers

Homegrown Oxidizers Part Eleven WSM After drying and storing our homegrown potassium perchlorate, we need to test it for purity. This step could just as well have been done before drying our samples, but we wanted to do all our testing at the same time. The primary contaminant of concern is sodium. Sodium has very strong spectral lines (primarily yellow) that interfere with color production in pyrotechnics. In fact, the least amount of sodium will usually mask the weak violet spectrum of pot

April 2, 2017

Homegrown Oxidizers

Homegrown Oxidizers Part Ten WSM We’ve run two batches of sodium perchlorate, one with a platinum anode and the other with a lead dioxide anode. Now we have more than five liters of raw sodium perchlorate solution (contaminated with an unknown amount of residual sodium chlorate). The next step in producing potassium perchlorate involves the destruction of the chlorates in the cell solution. The treatment of choice is the gas, sulfur dioxide (SO2). Lacking the resources to buy and safely hand