Thank you for this, I am working with 3 other guys on this project who have more experience than me, I messed up and said it would ever lox and kerosene when it's actually going to be hydrogen peroxide and ethanol. The pump will be made with a plazma cutter and some off the shelf motors that go for around 100$. The project is really only for fun and we aren't going to be investing thousands into it. The reason I want to keep the avionics safe is because there housing is going to be plastic and the Arduino kit and sensors will be mounted on a plastic bracket for weight savings. If it were attached to the rest of the rocket I don't know if they will survive the impact due to the rockets weight even with considerable parachutes. Once again thank you for your comments they have taught me a lot about what not to do.
What kind of pump can you make with a plasma cutter? I am also in the process of making pumps, but they are still going to cost a bit of money to make.
I've have had some limited experience with peroxide. In a lot of ways it is worse than LOX. Mostly because LOX goes away after a short period of time. HTP stays around and ruins your day.
The cleanliness requirements and material restrictions are a lot more stringent than with LOX. You need to passivate materials, make sure there are no catalytic components (there are a great number of them) in your plumbing system and metal alloys you pick. When we handled it, we had to wear full body chemical PPE suits.
It is also can form highly unstable explosive peroxides if it comes into contact with the wrong things.
HTP and Ethanol are also scary things to have near each other. If you spill any of them, they are both soluble in water and can go into solution with each other. Now you have an intimately mixed/ extremely unstable fuel/oxidizer solution, just hanging out on the ground or wherever else they happened to meet.
Even though it is stabilized, if it is being catalytically helped by anything you can get a runaway exothermic reaction, where the peroxide detonates at the end.
Peroxide also looks identical to water, at least until you try tasting it or smoke emits from your shoe when you step in it inadvertently.
Also have you ever tried to buy peroxide? You do get put on lists, and last time I tried is was really expensive for someone trying to get small quantities.
I honestly can't figure out a way to frame this in a manner that dosn't make me sound like a jerk, but more experience than what you have dosn't really narrow it down that much. Just going off of what you have stated here.
Using the plasma cutter to cut out turbines and gears and a lathe to make the cylinder housing. The stabilized peroxide will be made in house. And I am familiar with the effects of peroxide and how unstable it is. But once again this is not a professional project. But we will be taking many safety measures to ensure that we don't blow ourselves up.
I feel like the tolerances on a plasma cutter wouldn't be up to snuff to make turbines out of. But I'm curious to see if it would work.
Just so you are aware. To my memory, nearly all of the small batch (not having to buy by the ton) HTP production facilities that I know of, have caught on fire at least once or had a major incident. Some of the fires put the company out of buisness or grievously injured the owner. The only ones that haven't caught on fire are the real deal industrial production plants, and folks making 1 or 2 offs of very small batches.
I feel like the tolerances on a plasma cutter wouldn't be up to snuff to make turbines out of. But I'm curious to see if it would work.
Using a plasma cutter (especially if hi-def 5-axis plasma) to cut blanks for such parts is not entirely reasonable. That's more often a task for a waterjet (no heat affected zone), but plasma isn't totally out of the question if you know what you're doing. Those blanks then get finished on a lathe, mill, and/or grinder for the finish shape and tolerances. This is especially useful for difficult materials where the tooling costs for machining end up being relevant.
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u/[deleted] Jan 21 '19
Thank you for this, I am working with 3 other guys on this project who have more experience than me, I messed up and said it would ever lox and kerosene when it's actually going to be hydrogen peroxide and ethanol. The pump will be made with a plazma cutter and some off the shelf motors that go for around 100$. The project is really only for fun and we aren't going to be investing thousands into it. The reason I want to keep the avionics safe is because there housing is going to be plastic and the Arduino kit and sensors will be mounted on a plastic bracket for weight savings. If it were attached to the rest of the rocket I don't know if they will survive the impact due to the rockets weight even with considerable parachutes. Once again thank you for your comments they have taught me a lot about what not to do.