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Igniter Test #2

  • June 11, 2019June 5, 2020
  • by Dakota

Late last week, Castle Point Rocketry ran a successful test of our new igniter design. It is a variation on a theme (see our previous blog). This new model allows for better manufacturability and repeated use, but doesn’t sacrifice the engine-within-an-enigne design we wanted.

Many individual design components have changed over the last month. The fire now shoots down instead of up. There is a bored hole at the bottom so that the igniter can be removed from the engine quickly. We filed the top to a point so it fits into the engine more easily. Beyond that, it’s very much the same part.

  • Before testing.
  • After testing.

As you can see, we had a small meltdown problem, consistent with the last test. It’s a good thing that 3D-printed plastic parts are as printable as they are disposable!

Tom designed a gravity-driven system to quickly remove the igniter from the engine. By topping a vertical pole with the igniter, we can easily drop the assembly from the engine after ignition.

Our prototype igniter stand.

Now, we begin the process of moving forward. Our current goal is to outsource manufacturing to a local New Jersey company capable of machining it out of aluminum. That way it’s quick, close by, and made in the USA!

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Engine!

  • May 15, 2019June 5, 2020
  • by Nate

Two Thursdays ago, we received the first full print of our engine from SLM Solutions. Naturally, we were very excited, but we needed to get the build plates removed as quickly as possible. We got in touch with NJ Precision Technologies, who amazingly were able to Wire EDM cut the parts by Friday morning.

Internal x-ray photography of our engine.

When I visited NJPT, I met Bob Tarantino, President and Founder of the company, and he showed me around their facilities, including several Mitsubishi Wire EDM machines, HAAS CNCs, and a 6-axis Zeiss CMMs. I was blown away by their manufacturing capabilities as well as how friendly and interested in our project they were. And, they referenced us to another company, G. Cotter, to perform a couple welds on the nozzle to repair surface discontinuities.

At G. Cotter, just a couple miles from NJPT, before welding, they offered to x-ray our nozzle (above), which was a very pleasant surprise. They confirmed that the surface issues were not a structural problem. Plus, we get a view of the print’s regenerative cooling tubes! They then performed some of the most excellent welds I’ve seen (below). Now all that is left for a completed engine is heat treatment. Nonetheless, she looks absolutely stunning.

Finally, a fully-printed model of our engine.
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CPR Ties for First Place!

  • May 15, 2019June 5, 2020
  • by Dakota

You may recall Technogenesis. Colloquially called “TG,” it’s the entrepreneurship analog course to Senior Design. TG is designed to teach every team the metrics of making a business out of our projects. Most importantly, it teaches everyone the impact of a good pitch.

The culmination of the Stevens Innovation Expo is the elevator pitch competition — recently rebranded as the Ansary Entrepreneurship Competition. Ten teams compete for $17,500 in prize money. And we tied for first!

The team with our comically large check. We tied for first place!

The Ansary Entrepreneurship Competition is the final round in a series of judged pitches. The quarterfinals are a combination of two votes. First, all teams present in class to a panel of TG professors. Then, the public votes on each team’s pitch video on YouTube.

Castle Point Rocketry’s official TG video.

Castle Point Rocketry passed the quarterfinals on the public vote. Two weeks later, we also passed the semifinals, which left us with about a week to prepare for the Ansary Entrepreneurship Competition. Faris, our resident Pitch Master, worked overtime to make sure the pitch was the best it could be.

We were pretty happy with how he sounded — and apparently the judges were, too! The rest of the team joined Faris on stage after his pitch to answer any questions, of which there were only two. After the other nine teams pitched, they announced the co-winners: LifeSkills Software and Castle Point Rocketry! Castle Point Rocketry also won the “Audience Choice” award.

Our teams are are splitting the $15,000 reserved for the first- and second place teams. (They weren’t expecting a tie!) Castle Point Rocketry’s $7,500 will cover our transportation to and from the launch site. Stay tuned for more exciting updates!

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What’s the big deal about the Karman Line, again?

  • May 7, 2019June 5, 2020
  • by Dakota

We do a lot of talk about “space” and the “Karman Line” in our social media and these blogs. But what does that mean? What’s the big deal?

Space is a vacuum. It’s the area above our planet’s atmosphere where there is nothing — so it’s all of the nothingness between our planet and all of the other celestial bodies. (Venus, the Sun, the asteroids, and black holes all included.)

Our solar system. Space extends much beyond this, though.

The Earth’s atmosphere isn’t pure. At various places around the globe, you can find various concentrations of essential gasses in the air. (Nitrogen, oxygen, argon, and carbon dioxide are the key players.) However, the atmosphere also changes as you travel upwards. You know when flight attendants give that speech about air masks? That’s because the air at 33,000 feet is much thinner than at sea level — the atmosphere is less dense.

A prominent Hungarian-born aerospace engineer, Theodore von Kármán, spent much of his life studying jet engines at Jet Propulsion Laboratory. He noticed that engine efficiency decreases alongside air density. At a certain point (100 km above sea level, about 62 miles), the atmosphere becomes so thin that engines simply don’t work any more.

That is the Karman Line.

A cartoon of the various sections of the Earth’s atmosphere. The Karman Line is highlighted in red.

So why does Castle Point Rocketry want to get there? Well, there’s a bit of an unofficial space race happening between colleges, at the moment. Space Enterprise at UC Berkeley has released a challenge to all other colleges: Who can get to the Karman Line (and therefore space) first?

So far, the record is held by University of Southern California — 44 km. Just under half the way there. Other key contenders are Boston University, UC San Diego, Delft University of Technology, and our very own neighbors, Princeton University.

So, Castle Point Rocketry is here to settle it. Who will be the first into space? Stevens Institute of Technology, obviously.

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Innovation Expo 2019

  • May 5, 2019June 5, 2020
  • by Dakota

This past Friday, May 3, 2019, marked the annual Stevens Institute of Technology Innovation Expo. 189 senior projects were presented by individuals and teams from all four schools at Stevens: the College of Arts and Letters, the School of Business, the School of Systems and Enterprises, and the School of Engineering and Science.

Even Stevens’ mascot, Attila, dropped by!

Castle Point Rocketry occupied a series of tables in the Griffith Building, located beneath campus on the Hudson River. Alongside many other building-intensive teams, we presented our project to students, professors, Hoboken residents, and potential investors alike.

We brought out all of our toys for show and tell.

From 10:30am to 3:00pm, members of our team rotated through presenting at the table. Notable visitors included Attila the Duck (Stevens’s mascot), Dr. Nariman Farvardin (President of Stevens), Graham Boyd (our Regional Manager for SLM Solutions), and Bob Freno (Principal Member of Engineering Staff at L3 Technologies).

Our quarter-length airframe assembly was a crowd favorite.
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Airframe Time!

  • May 2, 2019June 5, 2020
  • by Nate

Here’s the dilemma. We need the strongest, lightest skeleton possible for our rocket. The obvious choice for material is aerospace grade aluminum. (6061-T6, duh.) We also need to cut a ton of pieces, and need them done fast. The usual way to do that is with a CNC milling machine, but that can take a while and be very expensive. Also, when you cut a piece of metal with a saw or a milling machine, the metal heats up causing it to anneal and weaken. So what’s the solution?

One of the CNC waterjet cutters at New Jersey Waterjet.

Waterjet cutting is the solution!! The helpful staff at New Jersey Waterjet were able to take our CAD files and produce 30 perfectly-cut parts in just under a week.

An original drawing, fresh from our CAD software

Waterjet cutting uses a high pressure stream of water and abrasive sand to cut through nearly anything. In addition to being fast and precise, waterjet cutting actively cools the parts, preventing them from becoming annealed.

The finished airframe parts

These parts will hold together the whole rocket, so it’s a good thing they’re strong.

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The Hunt for the Best Igniter

  • March 14, 2019June 5, 2020
  • by Dakota

So, rockets burn fuel. That much makes sense. And that combustion of cold liquid creates a lot of hot, pressurized gas that makes the rocket go upwards. Got it. But how does that begin?

You can’t light a kitchen stove without the internal igniter sparking. In the forest, you can’t start a campfire without flint and steel. (Or lighter fluid and a barbecue lighter.) But inside a rocket engine… things are a little more complicated. Castle Point Rocketry has been upending shelves worth of books (all online, don’t worry) searching for the question on the forefront of our minds: “How do we start our engines?” And we’ve narrowed it down to three major contestants.

“The Cotton Ball”

  1. Soak a cotton ball (or other highly-porous material) in something really flammable.
  2. Stick said drenched cotton ball on the end of a metal stick.
  3. Set rocket over stick, with cotton ball inside combustion chamber.
  4. Light cotton ball on fire.
  5. Release the fuel and LOX.
Proof of concept: It’s been done before.

Potential drawbacks include the sudden onslaught of liquid, though flammable, extinguishing the burning cotton ball.

“The Salt Crystal”

  1. Finish researching oxidizing rock salts. Some salts, when heated, spontaneously burst into flames and release copious amounts of oxygen — which helps fuel more decomposition.
  2. Acquire a small-ish amount of the chosen salt.
  3. Carefully pack the salt into a small container on the end of a large stick.
  4. Gently place the rocket over the stick, with salt container inside the engine.
  5. Warm the container and wait for sparks, then release the fuel and LOX.
A snippet of molten oxidizing salt shooting flames.. (1:55 – 2:10.)

Potential drawbacks include the risk of salt decomposing before the igniter set-up is prepared.

“Engine-ception”

Now imagine, if you will, an engine inside an engine.

  1. Source a suitable solid rocket motor, given its thrust/time curve.
  2. Semi-permanently affix the motor to the bottom face of the injector.
  3. Ignite the solid rocket motor.
  4. Release the fuel and LOX.

Solid rocket motors produce a very well-regulated flame over a set period of time. Additionally, this set-up allows both flames (from the starter and the combustion) to travel in the same direction. By doing so, we can reduce the chance of the starter blowing out!

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Senior Design

  • March 8, 2019June 5, 2020
  • by Dakota

Thursdays are a great reminder that this project is rooted in Stevens Senior Design.

Thursday mornings, the team gathers at 11:00am in TG-404-I. “Technogenesis” teaches business aspects co-curricular to the graduating class’s engineering projects. The professor, Sandra Clavijo, leads discussions ranging from market share development to pitch delivery.

Then, we retreat into our cave at CPR HQ to work for hours straight on the most challenging segments of the rocket. Typically.

Once every couple of weeks, we take an hour or two from our Thursday schedules to meet with our Technical Advisory Group (TAG). The day-to-day attendance changes, but TAG members include Stevens professors, industry professionals, and esteemed researchers. Yesterday was one such day.

The CPR team presenting to three members of the TAG. From right to left: Dr. Kishore Pochiraju, Dr. Biruk Gebre, Dr. Kevin Connington. Not pictured: Dr. Alex De Rosa, Dr. Ronald Besser.

As an added bonus, yesterday’s TAG meeting doubled as our team’s satisfaction of the Mechanical Engineering “Phase Four” report. Phase Four requires information on alpha prototyping and a testing plan for the integrated system.

The eight members of the team presented 26 slides to the TAG, followed by a period of questions and discussion on various subsystems designs. Most important were the progress made on the circuitry systems and the prototyping being done by our partner companies.

The TAG seemed pleased, which makes us happy, too. Actionable items included sourcing more wire rope for our static fire test and running another heat flow simulation on our injector/engine assembly.

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DIY Pressure Test

  • March 5, 2019June 5, 2020
  • by Dakota

The tests are evolving! Friday afternoon found Nate, Will, and Abe in the Griffith Lab doing another round of tests on the injector. Despite an injector print with no top and a few construction workers milling about, the test was a success.

The setup for tonight’s test

The injector hung from a plywood-and-8020 cantilever held together by that giant C clamp. A machined panel of acrylic lay flush to the misprinted top to prevent backspray. Pressurized water ran from a 5-gallon jug (located in the makeshift closet in the back corner) through the tubes and past the acrylic shield. A barrel borrowed from the teaching lab caught the outlet water, and our camera sat a safe 20 feet away to prove we were there.

To avoid the possibility of our water jug exploding, a computer regulated the pressure in the hose and that information was screen-cast to Abe. Will manned the pump and Nathan watched the camera.

Not pictured: Nathan with our high-speed camera.

When the valves were opened and the pump switched on, Abe stepped us through pressure testing up to 44 psi. The water came whooshing, we only got a little wet, and the injector performed wonderfully.

Chalk this test up as a victory — Nathan analyzed the video file and found appropriate atomization. All without causing a big boom and a gush of water from our tank! After sufficient congratulations, we tore down and cleaned the lab up for classes and other senior design teams over the weekend.

Stay tuned for more exciting injector updates!

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Designing a Circuit Board

  • February 28, 2019June 5, 2020
  • by ben

Over the past few weeks, we have been developing our first version of our Printed Circuit Board (PCB). We chose to use Eagle, a PCB Design Software, as it had an easy learning curve as well as an easily attainable educational license. In Eagle, we had to first design and import all the different electronic components that were going to be used into the rocket. We then had to figure out the correct electrical requirements for each component and how to link up each one correctly to the entire system.

The next step was to design the PCB layout itself. We started off with a circular design so it would fit into the rocket base. We then traced the connections so that they didn’t interfere with each other or cross each other. The blue and red lines below show different “levels” of connection. The red traces are the top copper connections, while the blue traces are the bottom copper connections.

We’ve spent a lot of time on it so far, but this is still only our initial design. It still needs to go under testing and multiple iterations to be ready for launch day.

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