[AR] Re: Thrust Chamber Manufacture
- From: Henry Spencer <hspencer@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: Arocket List <arocket@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Tue, 11 Aug 2020 16:14:40 -0400 (EDT)
On Mon, 10 Aug 2020, Jonathan Adams wrote:
So my question now is: for a small regeneratively cooled engine (like
the LR-101, mentioned already), with consideration to all the stresses
it must endure, compressive and otherwise, what are some of the more
appropriate options for manufacturing (particularly on a budget)? ...
The most appropriate option is something *you* can afford to do
repeatedly, because you're almost certainly going to need multiple design
iterations to make it work, and you'll lose chambers while finding out
what changes you need. You need to design with this in mind; if making
(say) ten chambers sounds impossibly expensive, you need to redesign for
lower cost. Think cheap and easy, not awesome high-tech beautiful.
Is CNC milling/turning a feasible option for this kind of work, or do
chamber geometries complicate this, making another manufacturing process
more appropriate?
Others may differ, but my take is that if you even need CNC, you're
thinking too fancy and making overly-optimistic assumptions about how many
chambers you'll need to make. (Exception: if you have, or plan to
acquire, *your own* CNC machine tools, that's a bit different.)
Preferably you should be able to make it, yourself, with a manual lathe
and mill.
As I said before: people made successful rocket engines before CNC.
That's the example you want to follow, not cost-is-no-object professionals
on government contracts.
Henry
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