Foil Lined Motor Tubes

What if any is the bonus of using foil lined motor tubes?

Andrew

Never seen one?! I'm guessing we're talking big rockets here...I'd have thought insulation to protect whatever's on the other side?

I tried some 29mm foil lined tube.

At some point after several flights, a SU motor got stuck in the tube. Probably a label issue.

As I recall, I ended up removing the foil.

The foil lined tube sounded like a good idea to me, but in reality, I'm not sure there is any advantage.

I'm thinking foil lined tubes are more of an aesthetic thing for rocket models that have open tubes. I'm just not sure how easily that foil gets damaged or starts peeling away.

accooper said:

What if any is the bonus of using foil lined motor tubes?

Click to expand...

I have tried the foil lined 24mm motor tubes. Besides the foil, they are thicker walled than ordinary 24mm rocket tubes, but about the same thickness as other 24 mm motor tubes.

The foil sounded like a good idea when I got it years ago, but the tubes ended up not being much more durable than other 24mm motor tubes. After a few ejection charges, the foil had curled up and separated from the tube wall resulting in bare spots in the motor tube just ahead of the forward end of the motor. That is, with the foil gone, the protection was reduced to just the motor tube wall.

In short, while they sound like a good idea, they're not really any better that any other thick-walled motor tubes.

Doug

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The foil line BT-50MF "Toast resistant" .992"OD x .095"ID x .021"wall tubes are thicker with an aluminum foil inner liner. Used to be available from Totally Tubular in 34" lengths. These make Excellent motor tubes for clustered and other bigger then BT-50 models. They Do Not Implode with motor heat as standard .013" wall BT-50's tend to do over time.

I don't suggest using them for main airframes just because of the extra thickness which does NOT allow standard BT-50 Nosecones and transitions to fit. But they are worth the few extra pennies they cost for cluster motor tubes.

I've seen Sodmeister use them on some of his TLP Builds. I thought about using them, but decided to just stick with LOC MMT since I already have a bunch of it.