winter builds and acquisitions

Wow!

I can’t believe it’s been almost 6 months since my last update. I guess life has been getting in the way. I certainly haven’t given up on rockets – if anything, my other hobbies have been suffering at the expense of rocketry. Spent the winter building, and rebuilding several rockets. A 98mm carbon fiber minimum diameter rocket (Like my old Tachyon here), a Ultimate Wildman (a platform to test some video hardware), and a Saturn V.  The Saturn V is about 1/35th scale – as you can see in the photo, it’s significantly larger then my Redstone at almost 11 feet tall.  What makes this Saturn V interesting is many of the parts on the rocket were built using my 3d printer. I’m currently working on the 3d model for the Launch Escape Tower. You can download my model from thingiverse page here. Just a word of warning – while the model is finished, it’s not printing correctly. I may need to add a raft, and some supports to ensure the build works. The 3d printer itself is an absolute blast. I can’t tell you how much of my free time I’ve wasted. I recently acquired a nextengine 3d laser scanner which essentially allows me to laser scan any object, then print it on my printer. I’ve become my own bespoke reverse engineering manufacturing plant in my basement. You can see some of the 3d scan’s I’ve done on my thingiverse page linked above.

I can basically print an entire rocket ready to launch. This particular rocket is so light and strong (ABS plastic, extruded with a 15% fiill) it doesn’t need a parachute, or even a streamer.