insutama Posted January 31, 2015 Posted January 31, 2015 Has anyone made rocket engines for the estes model rockets ? I think this would be a fun project making engines for next to nothing for these model rockets. whats all your opinions on this topic ?
Col Posted January 31, 2015 Posted January 31, 2015 Search for Ned`s article on the skylighter website, How to Make Model Rocket Engines.
calebkessinger Posted January 31, 2015 Posted January 31, 2015 Yep. love em... Lot's of fun and if you get em wrong you get to build another rocket!!! 1
Blackthumb Posted January 31, 2015 Posted January 31, 2015 Have a bunch of A 83 engines to sell or trade...
stix Posted January 31, 2015 Posted January 31, 2015 Has anyone made rocket engines for the estes model rockets ? I think this would be a fun project making engines for next to nothing for these model rockets. whats all your opinions on this topic ? Yeah, not black powder but sugar motor equivalents. Also made the bodies, nose, fins etc. It's not really a "money saving" exercise but lot's of fun and worth experimenting with. The main issue I had was recovery, ie. parachute deployment. The Estes rockets have a built in delay - I decided to do an electronic timer version. It worked flawlessly in testing but on launch it failed I never saw the rocket again. All that nice paint-work and handmade electronics - gone. Oh well, lots of fun making it anyway. Cheers.
calebkessinger Posted January 31, 2015 Posted January 31, 2015 ahh. jump up to a 5/8 or 3/4 in motor and you can build a one time use rocket in under an hour if you have lightweight shipping tubes or something to use. and you can make a paracute just fine.. put your bulkhead in drill it. pinch of bp tape and bam! ejection. It is pretty hard to make a long burn motor that has enough power to do what you want in estes size... I have heard they press their fuel to 24,000 psi. that's putting a lot of fuel in a little motor. hand ramming you only get a few seconds burn time where they can get up to six. everyone should build a tube rocket with fins just once. even if you use a 3/4 in motor. they are awesome.....
taiwanluthiers Posted February 3, 2015 Posted February 3, 2015 I have no idea how Estes motors are made except they have this big machine that presses them. No idea the loading pressure either. I tried hand ramming Estes equivalent motors but found that it had no where near the impulse or thrust of Estes motors... it may have to do with how they compress them, as if you unrolled one of those motors you will find that the bp is a very dense solid chunk. I tried googling the machines they use or any production pictures, but I can't find any.
dagabu Posted February 4, 2015 Posted February 4, 2015 There is an engineer around the forums that worked for ESTES, he wont give particulars but the motors were pressed in small increments in pressures exceeding 20,000LPI. The nozzles are pretty small as well giving relatively high chamber pressures.
Lurker Posted March 27, 2015 Posted March 27, 2015 (edited) Apologies for being late to the party.The history of Estes is quite interesting and there is a fair amount of info out there. The worker mentioned above may not be willing to share much info, but Vern Estes is.In 1958 when a model rocket manufacturer(MMI, Model Missiles) was looking for a more reliable manufacturer of it's model rocket motors, they approached several fireworks manufacturers around Denver. None of the fireworks companies were interested. Vern's parents were running a fireworks company called 'Mile High Fireworks' and they also were not interested, but, Vern's mother said that her son might be able to help them. Vern was at the time running a Garage construction company called 'Estes Enterprises', but he had also dabbled with electronic repairs (radio, TV etc) so was very technically minded.The owner of MMI showed a demo of a model rocket to Vern and he was impressed, so he agreed to help them.Vern spent many months of late nights, hard work and spare cash designing and scrounging scrap parts to build a machine that could automatically spit out a motor every 5.5 seconds.He named the machine 'Mabel'Mabel worked so well, and MMI fell short of their predicted sales estimates, that Vern had an excess of motors and decided to start offering the motors mail-order, Estes Industries was born.Eventually demand was so great that Vern sold Estes Enterprises(the Garage business) the rest as they say, is history. Vern has his own website with links to many articles and interviews about the company history and information about Mabel, it is all very interesting, I wish I had a time machine so I could go back and be a part of it! Vern sold Estes in '69, but stayed well into the 70's when ultimately he didn't like the direction the new owners were taking so he left. Mabel ended up having a few siblings as demand increased, Mabel II, Mabel III etc and they all ran 24 hours a day. The original Mabel got decommissioned in the mid to late 70's, almost a 20 year run for a machine made from scrap!! Vern's site with articles: http://www.vernestes.com/Published%20Articles.htmA very rough video of Mabel here: http://www.vernestes.com/Photos%20and%20Videos.htm Edited March 27, 2015 by Lurker 1
insutama Posted March 28, 2015 Author Posted March 28, 2015 Wow thanks for all that intresting information very Intresting they definatly over charge for there moters though
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