Thanks for the details and especially the PDF that shows the cross
section of the assembly. I was originally considering using a circular
connector with the shell removed but I couldn't come up with a way to
get it to pull out horizontally like you guys did. Very neat idea.
Since you removed the locking tab, what keeps the connector attached to
the vehicle on the pad? Friction?
-Bob
On 03/28/2017 02:49 PM, Nathan Bergey wrote:
Yes, the connector on the umbilical cable was male, once it was ejected there is just a small hole in the flight computer module. Not really even a hole, since the female side of the connector is nearly solid (just holes for the pins) and we had it mounted almost flush with the outside of the rocket.
I found the repository for the project:
https://github.com/psas/sw-cad-airframe-umbilical-disconnect <https://github.com/psas/sw-cad-airframe-umbilical-disconnect>
That has the Solidworks CAD for the ejector assembly, and (I completely forgot about this) a paper written by the student that worked on it:
https://github.com/psas/sw-cad-airframe-umbilical-disconnect/blob/master/Umbilical%20Cord%20Connector%20Ejection%20System%20Analysis.pdf <https://github.com/psas/sw-cad-airframe-umbilical-disconnect/blob/master/Umbilical%20Cord%20Connector%20Ejection%20System%20Analysis.pdf>
Here is a link to download a zipfile of the entire project for those confused by github:
https://github.com/psas/sw-cad-airframe-umbilical-disconnect/archive/master.zip <https://github.com/psas/sw-cad-airframe-umbilical-disconnect/archive/master.zip>
The connector it was built around is a "ODU Medi-Snap connector. Size 1, 7 contact version."
Not sure on the part number, since we got them surplus... but a guess is:
Male on umbilical cable: S21M-07-P07XXXX-XXX5
Female on the rocket: G11M-07-P07XXXX-X0X0
They're very nice connectors, but not really ideal for this use because it's not flush, again it's what we had available.
Also they are locking connectors, so we filed off the plastic locking mechanism on the umbilical. However, this turns out to be a nice feature for testing, we had a normal locking version for the development cable when in the lab that would snap in nicely to the avionics stack.
-Nathan
