What is it about?
We put together a gantry system to dispense additives and paraffin "candle wax" in layers for a hybrid rocket motor. This allows the user to select what the force generated by the rocket should be when it is turned on. The computer operation of the gantry system was designed with a LabView VI. The Paraffin was kept liquid and for the test reported the additive system was not used. An ideal customer would be a small satellite launch company interested in designing rocket grains for a specific burn profile so that the user can provide input to the computer and the computer can interpret the input in terms of the amount and location of additives.
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Why is it important?
This technology is useful for the small satellite customer. It provides customization of payload destination, trajectory, vibrations during flight and with abstraction of the details required. Example burns can be made available to a user which provides them feedback for all live updates for the duration of the flight.
Perspectives
Lessons learned include the difference in theory between dispensing powders and liquids. It was also important to reduce the time between dispensing each layer so that active cooling was required, but conductive cooling was slow and convective cooling disturbed the surface of the layer. This is an ongoing trade study.
Oluwatobi Busari
Purdue University
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: 3D Printer for Paraffin Based Hybrid Rocket Fuel Grains, January 2015, American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA),
DOI: 10.2514/6.2015-0924.
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