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| Well, the experiment survived surprisingly intact. We have just taken it out of the dumpster - that's what all the smoke in the background is. Notice that the experiment itself is not smoking. It moved the lids of the dumpster when it went off, but the dumpster survived with no problems. | The only shield that suffered any failure was the Acrylic one. It was in two sheets, and the outside sheet fractured at the mid point. All the other shields came through with no problems. |
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| This is a better view of the Acrylic portion that failed. Now - imagine that you are on this side of the shield when it went off. What would your upper torso look like? | There was a lot of flash burn on the inside. All of the shields were darkened on the inside. |
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| This is what was left of the motor sleeve and clamps. Notice the lid - the steel plate used on the inside, and the charred wood. (Refer back to the picture when it was taken from the dumpster. Lots of smoke in the dumpster, but none on the experiment when it was removed. All the burn was from the initial blast.) | A better close up of the inside. Those clamps were originally symmetrical, but they quickly turned into a lot of straight pieces. Better yet - what about the PVC? Imagine what would happen if you were standing right next to this motor without a shield and it went off while you were pressing it. Further, imagine that the shield was protecting your upper torso - how are your arms and hands protected? |
| The end result? It is obvious that the blast from a whistle motor can create
a lot of damage. To avoid injury
while pressing, it is a good idea to use a proper shield. Shields made from oak
or Lexan were able to withstand the explosion, but Lexan is preferred because it
is transparent. While the 1/4" sheet of Lexan made it through the experiment in
one piece, we will double (or triple) the number of sheets - as an extra
added measure of safety. It is a good idea to try and devise a method
where your arms and hands are not directly exposed while the pressing
process is taking place. This experiment also had the added factor of
restricting the burst in four different directions, vs. having a single
shield on a 'real' rocket press. We feel that while the stresses will be
high in the event of a catastrophic failure in the press, by leaving a
large area open the stresses on the shield will be somewhat less than what
our shields experience in this experiment. Some examples of Lexan blast shields on different setups (click on image for larger picture): |
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| One final note and a very big disclaimer: DO NOT TRY THIS AT HOME. As you can see, we did a lot of preparation for the experiment. Whistle rocket composition can be dangerous to work with. Our intention was to see what would be the best blast shield material, and the only way we knew to see what would work is to try and imitate a real catastrophic failure. We did this to further safety for our fellow pyros. We assume no responsibility for idiots who think this would be 'cool' to try out unsupervised or unprepared. Hope to see you all at WWB!!!
Tech questions/comments - email me: RocketTom@aol.com
Chris can be reached - falcons@earthlink.net
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