Meal Powder based stars.

[aa92td]

Hey guys.

In the last few weeks i've been worked on my ball mill and my bp.

now after i improved my bp i want to start making a big amount of ceap stars, and i have 1.5Kg of meal powder.

i already made Half kilo of Aqua_PO start.

and well, i tried meal/Al but my Al is not fine enough.

I searched all over the forum and in passfire to , but didn't find something intersting.

i tried EC silver glitter - my aluminum is not good enough.

 

so i need from you guys any suggestions for star formulas that working and have nice effect (its pretty important ).

 

oh and one more thing.

i dont have:

 

antimontrisulfide.

perchlorate.

MgAl

titanium.

 

 

 

 

ok , so any suggestions guys?.

thanks alot , AgwA.

[yellowcard]

Do you have magnesium ? 10-15% mixed with your meal powder wil be beautiful. Some additional chunks of charcoals ( 20-60 mesh ) wil be nice too.

[aa92td]

yep i have magnesium. but add magnesium to meal powder is unstable....

i've alrdy try this formula and its pretty nice but its not such a cheap because i buy my magnesium in 1 Kg that cost 30$ , its pretty expensive. any wat thanks i will try to add some charcoal..

 

some more suggestions?

[al93535]

You can make a white star with meal powder:

 

KNO3: 57%

Sulfur: 23%

Meal powder: 20%

 

You can file down an iron or steel nail and add the powder to your meal to get bright orange yellow sparks.

 

You can add coarse charcoal to get a long thin tail of dim orange sparks.

 

You can add up to 35% fine charcoal to get a dense thick tail of orange fire dust.

[hst45]

Try Tigertail, it's wonderful looking, cheap, and easy (damn, that sounds like my girlfriend!) JUST KIDDING (in case my wife's watching )

 

44 KNO3

44 Charcoal

6 Sulfur

6 Dextrin

 

You can use your crappiest charcoal, no problem, the coarser the longer the tail. Cut stars take fire without a prime, but a dusting of meal powder wouldn't hurt. And don't tell me you don't have dextrin; go to the supermarket and get cornstarth; if you have an oven, you have dextrin.

[tentacles]

Stop by a local automotive repair shop, ask them if you can have some of their brake turnings. They are iron/steelite powder, all of the turnings I have seen should be fine enough to work in a meal/metal star. I can't imagine that a shop would charge you anything for them, either.

 

You should try some of the charcoal stars, like Tiger Tail. It's one of my favorite effects, and cheap + easy to make.

[aa92td]

ok....i have an iron but i thought that after a while the iron will become rust and the its will destroy all the star effect.

that why i didn't made those stars before.

 

and about charcoal stars like TT and crysanthemum6,8 and so.

 

i've already made them. i am looking for suggestions fot Meal powder based stars.

 

i already have red stars and green and yellow and white and glitter.

 

but i want to make kilos of stars that why i am looking for cheap and good looking cheap formula.

 

Al...i will try your charcoal-Mealpowder suggestion.

 

any more suggestions will be great =].

 

Thanks , AgwA.

 

sorry about my English.

[crazyboy25]

http://www.apcforum.net/forums/index.php?showtopic=44

[Mumbles]

I moved this to the pyrotechnics section. The comp section is for actual formulas, not questions like this.

 

Anyyway, if you search in the comp section, there is a thread by me called "spider stars". There are 2 comps in there. One uses meal, and the other uses comp milled together. The meal comp will work for you. Very pretty star with big bushy tail, kinda fast burning though.

[psyco_1322]

Well add 100g of Mg to your K of meal, and just add in some boric acid to be safe. Yes its not usually protective of Mg but its not going to hurt to add it, might just slow it down a bit. And you can surely find boric acid as roach killer if you dont have any. The whole cost for the nice looking star will be your cost of bp plus the whole $3 of Mg you use, $3 for 1220g of star comp? Thats not that bad.

 

BP-1000g

Mg-100g

Dextrin-100g

+ Boric Acid-20g

----------------------

White tailed star comp-1220g

 

If you want more add 10% charcoal to that.

[qwezxc12]

Well add 100g of Mg to your K of meal, and just add in some boric acid to be safe. 

STOP. Sorry, this is WRONG, it will hurt the comp, and if you're making 1200g of it, it may heat up and get away from you in a bad way.

 

Boric acid is used to protect Al in nitrate comps, NOT Mg!

 

Aluminum is more reactive in alkaline conditions, but less reactive in (weak) acid environments. The alkaline reaction between Al and nitrates is exothermic, and liberates ammonia, which will accelerate the reaction further. This is why it is common to buffer comps high in Al and -NO3 with a weak acid, as the reaction will only take place in basic conditions. Mg is attacked by acids, so adding boric acid is a bad idea, especially when using an aqueous binder. I believe Shimizu's Art and Science also mentions this on page 123.

 

The easiest way to protect Mg (at least when using any oxidizer other than Ammonium Perchlorate) is by coating it with linseed oil. You can then use it with aqueous binders (dextrin, etc) without degradation. If you don't want to coat it, use a non water based binder; I make my Mg comets with resorcinol resin binder.

 

BTW...making 1220g of any comp the first time is potentially wasteful and could be hazardous. For instance, the difference between flake Al and spherical Al in a glitter can totally change a desired effect...You may not even like the effect and now you've wasted a lot of chems and effort. You should always make new compositions cautiously and test them before making 1+kg batches.

[aa92td]

http://www.apcforum.net/forums/index.php?showtopic=44

About that suggestion , i've already told in my first post that my aluminum is not good to this comp , i wish he was.

And about add magnesium to a meal powder, i will try it with some charcoal , and btw my magnesium is covered something , but i dont know if it linseed oil, i will cover him with linseed oil its very easy, hope to show some results in few days.

 

Any more suggestions will be great (if there is O.o)

[mormanman]

I have a comment about the Mg stars.

I've only had one problem w/ them, the light to easly. I've never had a spontanous ignition, although pyroguide warns about KNO3/Mg flash and its risk of spontanous ignition. Anyway I was drying them and thank God my mom went into the room, but the drier ignited the stars. Its never happened before, not with bp or TT anyway. So just sun dry them instead or the drier drying them its a bad idea.

[Mumbles]

What about your alumin did not work in the other formula? Did it not ignite? Did it not glitter?

 

What kind of Al do you have? Size, and particle shape.

[aa92td]

mmm i dont know what mesh i got because i buy my aluminum from chemicals store and in my country they dont know what mesh is the aluminum.

 

but my aluminum is making very beauty glitter.

he is very good for glitter but not working with meal & metal.

 

and when i'm doing meal - metal it is ignite but the black powder just burn slowlier and after the burn you can see melt aluminum on the ground.

 

 

sorry about my english.

[Mumbles]

Just so you know, that what it's supposed to do. The meal is relatively optimized to burn itself completely. Adding extra fuel(Al), will slow it down. In the air it will be fine. There will be extra oxygen available. The molten aluminum will form a tail in the air. Did you expect it just to be a point of light or something?

[aa92td]

i tired to make stars from this formula meal Al 80-20 , and when its light and flying its just make a ball of fire and then falling on the ground.

 

sorry about my English.

AgwA.

[ltf]

I have the same Al as Agwa's and it's no good for flashes and stuff like this, it's only good for very rough glitter effect and maybe fountains.

we have no way to measure it's grain size or shape as we can't get in this god damn country meshes with a grain size on them.

I believe it's suitable for this thread, do you guys know about compositions that will give a fine and thick tail with this kind of Al?

I have the same meterials that Agwa has.

[Mumbles]

There is no concievable way to answer that without knowing the size and shape of the aluminum. You guys need to invest in a microscope or a set of screens to check. You should definatly be able to tell the difference between flake or atomized just from looking at it, so I don't know why you can do that. Flake is fluffy and will float around, while atomized packs pretty densely.

 

It's the equivalent of saying "I have these tiles. I don't know what shape they are or how big they are. How can I fit them on my floor"

[psyco_1322]

Well maybe thats why my comets came apart, boric acid is bad! Well at the time I thought it was magnalium.

 

But ya dont make up a kilo of comp at a time, just referencing the amount:cost.

[ltf]

Flake is fluffy and will float around, while atomized packs pretty densely.

I didn't Know that. But how strong is the microscope I'll need for figuring out the shape of the Al? Because I can use the microscopes my school have.

[Mumbles]

The shape should be easy. I have a cheap ass playset microscope that goes to maybe 60 or 100x and I can see metals perfectly fine. At 100x a 325 mesh metal will be amplified to around 1/3 of an inch wide theoretically. More than enough to see the particle shape.

[aa92td]

A new glitter star formula that i found. (based on Meal powder)

 

http://www.apcforum.net/forums/index.php?act=ST&f=12&t=2101