Powderman Posted February 18 Posted February 18 A year ago I got the idea of some sort of a handheld flare without tube, a bit like a sparkler but with colored light effect. Something cheap and easy to manufacture, something that can be used without noise. I have started with nitrate/Mg/PVC star compositions, tweaked it and finally this winter I found that the composition can be extruded from syringe to easily form sticks of various diameters and lengths. Red, green, yellow and in-between colors are getting close to my liking, but blue is still far from success. The thing is, at the moment only AP or K/Ba chlorate is available to me, and I would like it to be nice blue color with not too fast burning and the composition has to be suitable for extruding... PVC or PVC+parlon works with THF, or NC works too. Dextrin does not work... I have tried most common star formulas, chlorate based were poor, AP based were much better... It would be great if some chlorate formula could be tweaked to work, but I am not sure if it is even possible (speed and color). I have PVC and parlon as chlorine donors, copper, copper oxychloride, oxide, basic carbonate, benzoate, NC, phenolic resin, hexamine, lactose, shellac, sulfur, stearic acid, paraffin, Mg, MgAl... Could someone help me with a hint or maybe some special formula?
CHNO Posted February 18 Posted February 18 I have a formula off the top of my head: 2 AP (58.7%) + PVC (15.6%) + Hexamine/6 - CH2N.7 - (5.8%) + CuO (19.9%)
Crazy Swede Posted February 18 Posted February 18 What you need is a working fuel matrix that has a lower than usual oxygen demand. Otherwise it will be hard to have an extrudable mass that does not produce soot that makes the blue colour whitish. This will be hard with ordinary materials but the Chinese obviously have solved it with their jetting jelly bean effects. If I were to pursue this I would probably base the binder on nitrocellulose and PVB together with potassium chlorate and black copper oxide. As primary fuel I would choose something like red gum, shellac or phenolic resin. Since potassium chlorate will have the largest percentage in the composition, it would really help the flowing properties of the wet mixture if the finest particles were sifted away. For example only using particles bigger than 75 microns.
Crazy Swede Posted February 18 Posted February 18 Mad Boy, why make an effort to produce videos that are completely non-informative? If you have something to show, also explain what it is and how you make it. And skip the silly music, it only makes your videos less serious! 3
Powderman Posted February 18 Author Posted February 18 5 hours ago, Crazy Swede said: Mad Boy, why make an effort to produce videos that are completely non-informative? If you have something to show, also explain what it is and how you make it. And skip the silly music, it only makes your videos less serious! Crazy Swede, thank You for writing it so I do not have to :-) 13 hours ago, CHNO said: I have a formula off the top of my head: 2 AP (58.7%) + PVC (15.6%) + Hexamine/6 - CH2N.7 - (5.8%) + CuO (19.9%) I can try it... Here is some testing footage containing blue formulas: https://youtu.be/c9x31YzSWIc
cmjlab Posted February 18 Posted February 18 Most of the green ones looked pretty nice. A couple of the red ones too. I'm not sure what you're aiming for, but it looks like you have a couple good formulas there. Nice
Crazy Swede Posted February 18 Posted February 18 All the blue flames had red tips, a sign of copper species being oxidised into CuO that emits red light. Try using a little less oxidiser, more chlorine donor and/or adding something that could help deoxidise the flame. For the latter, sulfur can be effective but be aware of the sensitivity issues with chlorates!
Powderman Posted February 19 Author Posted February 19 Thanks for the ideas, it will have to find some time to do tests... I will come back with the findings. Here are some pictures from manufacturing and testing red and green sticks.
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