Adventure 2 final design prepared for assembly

Greetings people, Daniel here. I know that it has been about a year since I last made a post. I have been held up by school work and getting very sick at the end of last year. This year I started a bridging course for university. Finally I now have a chance to continue.

In this post I will talk about the progress that I have been going through with my Adventure 2 project. About a year ago, I had been working on design prototypes for my next rocket. Like some of you saw in the previous post, I am using my 3d printer to help with the work. At the beginning of my last year of school, work had to stopped, but after graduation I was able to continue. It was not long before I started running out of filament, it took a couple of months until new filament was ordered and delivered.

During the designing of Adventure 2, there were 9 design prototypes. Each time I printed a part on the 3D printer I would check the prototype for flaws and fit. Then a new design prototype needed to be starts. After having all those flaws and changing prototypes, design prototype 9 was the one that I was happy with and chose as the final design. After every component was digitally drawn on my computer using Auto Desk Inventor, I then printed every one of them out and tested it in a dry assembly and now everything is ready for the final assembly and painting.

Top photo is the base of the rocket, the ring plus elastic band are used to keep the fins in place. This is placed under a cardboard tube, and it already has the motor mount installed but not glued.

Second top photo is the mid section attachment which connects 2 cardboard tubes together to form the whole body of the rocket.

Middle photo shows the top section attachment where short stabilizers connect to. That ring is used to hold them in place, until they are glued in place. This section is placed at the top of the rocket under the nosecone.

Second bottom photo is the nosecone. This is the part of the rocket I have started first. It was printed in four separate components.

The  bottom photo shows a early dry assembly of only a couple of sections of the rocket which was a few weeks ago.

This video shows one of the rocket fins being printed on the 3d printer, a rocket part like that takes hours to print, but I sometimes design other parts while it is under way.

The Next step

(26/12/2017 )
Greetings people, I'm back again, with another Blog post, and unexpectedly, I'm actually continuing my work with rockets next year. And I've got some more good news, I'm now on to the next step of model rocket building. Why, because yesterday, I got a 3D Printer for Christmas just as I wanted.

Here's what happened weeks earlier. After I finished school and finished my 10 days of work experience at my Dad's power station in Kwinana, I've been told some bad news about my subject selections for next year. The subjects I've had chosen for 2018, are the exact same as what I had for this year. One of the non ATAR subjects I have already past, which is "Graphics and Design",  a "certificate 2 vet course", as I've done that, I can't do it again. I didn't succeed in my Engineering course this year as I didn't meet my requirements because of setbacks I've faced   All this shattered me and all this caused me to lose Engineering as a subject. It caught me in a bit of a melt down but I got through it, and after deciding about having "No" ATAR subjects, I then decided to continue with my work with rockets in 2018.

When it was getting close to Christmas, I made a Christmas list of what I would like for Christmas. One of the things I wanted was a 3D Printer, I've got it. We've tested it, and it worked perfectly when we printed a test rabbit. Then that night, Dad tried out one of his projects he designed.

Today on Boxing day, I've printed 2 sections of a rocket nose cone, the first section took an hour, and the second one is taking more than 2 hours. I'm very pleased with the work of this printer and I'll continue later. Until then, good bye.

(7/01/2018)
Hello again, I've got some extra bits. The 3D Printer I've got for Christmas is spectacular. I've printed my first Prototype Nose cone with a few design flaws due to rushing to get a complete prototype.

These were taken a day after Christmas, tested with a test tube you can see in the top photo. Unfortunately there have been some problems with the printing with the cone section but everything went well, the start of the second prototype didn't because the first section was the only thing that I've printed but the print got messed up. This is the extra bit I wanted to share, until next time, goodbye.

(2/06/2018)
Sorry for the delay of publishing this post. I've got held up by school work and now here it is. 

What if the history went differently

Monday(6/11/2017)
Greetings people, I'm back again, and I'm still remembering that disaster with the Dooms Day of rockets, which had been cancelled which also put an end to the Rocket club in Toodyay. I've been thinking about what will this be like if the history went differently? That might have a positive/negative outcome, the positive outcome would have been, the Farm will be fully prepared for use and we have the go for launching for all our rockets. The negative outcome would have been, the farm was fully prepared for us and then it was snatched from us by other people (Who are NOT members of our club), but we could still have our actual site for the club at Toodyay as long the CAS thing lasted longer but that was never going to happen which was a major impact on me and on the club.

I think this is where it ends for this year, but I might be back with one last blog post to end this year of homemade rockets, but unfortunately my time of rocketry is finished for now until the start of 2019, because next year is my last year of high school, I'll be in year 12 and it's going to be the most challenging year yet. Because there's going to be a lot of work coming my way, so I need to stop rocketry for a year so I'm ready for what's coming.

Sunday(3/12/2017)
I really wanted to go, but some people say "There are things we just can't change". I shall move on and look forward, not too much on looking back, and I shall begin soon. Until then, see you later.

A very exciting end for the year, (CANCELLED)

Greetings people, yes I know, I'm back with another blog post but unfortunately I have some bad news. The Dooms day of Rockets has been Cancelled, plus we have no other launch dates left for the year which is a really disappointing for me and all the other club members and worse, the club at Toodyay is now out of use forever. Maybe forever but that's probably what's it's going to be for the rest of the time.

Before I continue, you may have been wondering why it's been a while since I've last posted a blog post, is because I've been on a 5 week holiday in Europe since the start of the school holidays and since I've came back, I've never made another blog post for this blog since I came back but now I decided to make this blog post for the sad news.

So how did this all happen is some what up setting, since the President of the club, Phillip left the club, up until now the PAC thing that gave the club insurance was now out of action so we no longer have insurance for any rocket launches for now on. Also the Farm area is now being used by someone else before we have a chance to use it. Jeremy told us all about the information on Facebook and that to me was a big set back because I was so ready for it and now it's cancelled.

(14/09/2017)
For now on, until the end of next year, I won't be doing any model rocket building or launching, because '2018' is going to be a very busy year and there will be a lot of work to do for school and I won't be doing rocketry for 'that' year as I speak. But don't worry, I still can make blog posts of rockets but not for the holiday one because '2018' is a "No holiday Year" and then on '2019' I will be back to rocket building and I'll be ready for anything including the next holiday during that year, which is going to the United States of America and during that I'll be going to NASA for the first time, but that is less than 2 years to come.

I'll be back so I can give more information of what's happening with rockets and then, whenever I come back with more blog posts and until next time, See you soon.

The Adventure 1

Greetings people, I know I haven't made a blog for a few weeks and now I'm back with another blog post, this one will be explaining about the rocket I built which is the Adventure 1, mostly the materials I used for it and the explanation of how it was being built with these materials.

I'll start with the explanation of the rocket itself, The Adventure 1 is my first, well the only homemade rocket I have and built for now, colored yellow and red (Red on the nosecone), for that the rocket is not fully complete, it still needs its last bits of painting on the fins and paint writing on the body of the rocket but the rest of it makes it mostly complete and to me it looks really good and even when it first launched 3 weeks ago, it performed really well as I expected it to. It flew nearly in a straight line, the motor didn't explode and the parachute performed perfectly, the extra best bit is because of the wind, it floated down wards being blown back to the launch site well landed very close by so I didn't have to walk so far to find it.

Now I'll get on with the materials that were used for each component. Starting with the motor mount, the production of the motor mount starts with the cylinder like motor casing which is made from a toilet role which was cut into a fin sheet of cardboard and wrapped around with a bead of glue at the same time while an motor which was used is what the cardboard is wrapping around. Once the glue is dry, I then made the 2 rings that go over the tube, my Dad helped me with it as I did the start which didn't quite had the right fitting but when he did his way and I did what he did, I managed to succeed and made slight adjustments. the rod that's holding the motor in is made from a paper clip which Dad bent into a straight rod and then made the measurements and bent it into shape and it looked perfect. The fins are from a sheet of cardboard just like the 2 rings on the motor mount, I made a template first made a design of the fin on Autodesk Inventor, then drew the cut out lines on the cardboard and cut them all out, as I glued all 4 of them on the rocket, I used pins instead of blue tack to hold the fins in place then glued the edges of the fins that are in contact with the body of the rocket and applied them with arraldite.

The nose-cone was a challenge to build,  took 1 or 2 days to figure out how to build one when Dad came up with a solution by cutting rectangles without cutting them out, folding them inwards to form a spiral cone and gluing it on the inside and outside  and applying it with arraldite, then making the divider along with a pink rope going through it and attaching the other end of the rope was an elastic band that was attached to the side of the rocket where Dad poked 2 holes in it to slide in the elastic band. And now the Parachute, the parachute is made out of a David Jones shopping bag which was cut into nearly a circle shape with a frying pan and then attaching about 8 sets of string each side of the string attached to each 2 holes for each set of string, attaching it to the nose-cone and we are done.

The Rocket is just about complete, although the rocket has been painted Yellow for the entire rocket and red on the nose-cone but it still needs to be painted with black on the fins and with black or red Paint writing then it's finished. This is where the blog post ends, not the actual blog but just the blog post, I will be back with more and I'll be making another blog but this time on my second European holiday so until next time, Bye.

3/10/2017
Here's the video of the rocket launching:

You'll see here, the Adventure 1 rocket takes off after I've finished the 5 second count down which has been cut short to 1 second. That occurred on (28/05/2017)...

Launch day Aftermath

Greetings people, I'm back and with exciting news. I had a great day at the rocket club and with my first scratch rocket, I've got 2 very successful launches of it, it flew straight and the parachute made from a 'David Jones' shopping bag has successfully done it's job and everything came down safely without any damage at all. But just a scratch of the paint job in the straws because they have a ruff surface making it hard for the paint to hold on.

Well, for the rest of the day, I've watched all the other rockets from Frank, Jeremy, Steve and Peter take to the skies, they were quite loud because these rockets were big, if you were there, you'll need to wear some ear plugs. Believe me, it can hurt your ears easily.

These are the photos of the Adventure 1 that were taken today

(29/05/2017): Everything went really well over there yesterday but the bad thing was, I got so tired when we got back home and last night we had to get ready for bed at 9:00 PM. Well, I'll continue this blog post and with a video of the launch of the Adventure 1 from my Dad's phone and until next time, good bye.

Day before Launch

Greetings people, I'm back again and with more good news, my rocket is just about complete, nosecone is painted, parachute is made, motor mount installed even the elastic band is installed. And one last bit of good news, the second launch day of rockets is tomorrow and we have a "Go for Launch", and just hoping that it stays that way.

It was frustrating that I've missed the previous launch day because the rocket is not ready but now, for tomorrow, it will. And I'll be there, for the first time of this year but second day of launching rockets and it will be a great time meeting all the other club members again including Phillip who is the President of the club.

It won't be long until I launch the Adventure 1 which is the rocket I was building for the first time, recovering it and preparing it for another flight. I'll have to end this blog now, it will be a long day tomorrow, although I need to wake up in the morning, get ready, pack the car and head off mostly by 7:00 AM because heading to the club is a 2 hour drive, well, all the best for tomorrow, Bye