bibbster
Well-Known Member
It was over four years ago now that I had this vision of a steampunk rocket with a nod to retro sci-fi. I had the plan in my head, along with a logo design, but the rocket never came to fruition. The logo, well, I had that printed by Mark at StickerShock four years ago when he printed my L1 rocket decals that I designed. So I was committed to making it happen at that point. The question became when, not if.
Fast forward, well not too fast, to a couple of years ago and I designed a nose cone to match the drawing in my head. Nothing complicated, but nobody made one to scale that I needed so I figured I would 3D print it. I won't go into all the details, but after a few attempts, I finally had a printed nose cone in my hands last week. But let's not get ahead of ourselves.
This past spring I decided it was time to get this idea from my brain onto paper, and then actually build the silly thing. So began the build of Astronef. While I didn't take a ton of build pics, I did take some. I normally would have done a build thread, but I wanted to get it done and figured pictures were worth a thousand words so here we go...
Here are some specs that some may be interested in:
Custom NC80 3D printed nose cone
BT80 tubes for the body
Estes NC55 pod cones
Custom fin design
Fin pod tail cones are flashlights from the dollar store
38mm MMT
Launch Lab Rocketry motor retainer
Custom 3d printed motor adapter for 29mm motors (the one pictured is a prototype)
36" parachute
5' 11" tall
34.5oz w/o motor
Inaugural launch is set for 9/17/2022 (stay tuned!)
Fast forward, well not too fast, to a couple of years ago and I designed a nose cone to match the drawing in my head. Nothing complicated, but nobody made one to scale that I needed so I figured I would 3D print it. I won't go into all the details, but after a few attempts, I finally had a printed nose cone in my hands last week. But let's not get ahead of ourselves.
This past spring I decided it was time to get this idea from my brain onto paper, and then actually build the silly thing. So began the build of Astronef. While I didn't take a ton of build pics, I did take some. I normally would have done a build thread, but I wanted to get it done and figured pictures were worth a thousand words so here we go...
Here are some specs that some may be interested in:
Custom NC80 3D printed nose cone
BT80 tubes for the body
Estes NC55 pod cones
Custom fin design
Fin pod tail cones are flashlights from the dollar store
38mm MMT
Launch Lab Rocketry motor retainer
Custom 3d printed motor adapter for 29mm motors (the one pictured is a prototype)
36" parachute
5' 11" tall
34.5oz w/o motor
Inaugural launch is set for 9/17/2022 (stay tuned!)
Seriously though, thanks for the compliment. Happy to provide details of how I did things if you are interested.
