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  #1  
Old 01-16-2017, 10:23 PM
Vanel Vanel is offline
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Default My fairly expensive, COTS motor test stand

Thought some may find this interesting - details here
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Old 01-17-2017, 12:41 AM
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BEC BEC is offline
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Thanks, Bill. I've often thought of trying to do something like this myself. I have the pieces of a full up Medusa Power Analyzer Pro setup including the "thrust cell", which is a scale that talks to their data analyzer. I may have to see if that can be adapted to do this. A bird in hand and all that.....
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Old 01-17-2017, 01:45 PM
yousah yousah is offline
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That's interesting- thanks for the details.

Our kids are doing SLI and already own the LabQuest interface. Just might buy the load cell to test it out. It's a neat unit, and the LB has a lot of sensors available for all sorts of uses. We're just hoping that it survives SLI
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Old 01-17-2017, 05:34 PM
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Gus Gus is offline
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Bill,

Very cool!

For those less inclined to build their own I thought I'd share a link with a truly remarkable unit from Adrel Electronika in Poland (photos below). The U.S. Spacemodeling team has used this the last few years to verify the quality of motors we purchase at the Internats. It's a small unit designed just to test model rocket motors. Portable, touch screen operated, runs on a 9 volt battery, data downloadable to excel. Pricey, but phenomenally well designed and easy to use.

A number of different load cells are also available for purchase for the Adrel, from low to high power capable. Like you, Bill, I had to incorporate the load cell into a test stand. The Aerocon website gave very nice instructions how to build one.

Final note. No talk of model rocket motor test stands should be complete without a shout out to the late Art Rose, who for years produced the only commercially available hobby rocket motor test stands, which you can read about here. They were from an earlier, more cumbersome, era of electronics but they worked, and Art made them available to those of us with very limited technical knowledge. Just another of the many ways Art advanced our hobby.
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Old 11-30-2017, 09:18 PM
Vanel Vanel is offline
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Measured the thrust of B14 and B8 motors this past Saturday. Puzzled why the B14 peak thrust was only 21 Newtons. Write-up here:

http://billsrockets.blogspot.com/20...it-of-past.html
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Old 11-30-2017, 09:50 PM
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Vanel
Measured the thrust of B14 and B8 motors this past Saturday. Puzzled why the B14 peak thrust was only 21 Newtons.

How very interesting.
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