Can I Re-Use an Igniter?

[ksaves2]

As kids we just made thick napalm formulated to dry up.

With enough current, all kinds of goo burns well enough to light a Estes motor. We used a car battery and phone line.

Yeah, I remember those days from the 60's and early 70's. A car battery could light up everything but I used lamp zip cord as recommended by Vernon Estes.

Did an Estes Cobra in the 5th grade until a deployment "issue" caused it to splatter itself. Built a carbon copy as an old man and it flies great on three B6-4's in a small field and goes way up on C6's. Has to have a larger site with the bigger motors on the C6's.

I did a static line with small kevlar thread that is in one of the fins on the second build. Can't be seen and use an elastic "shock cord" inside the body tube attached to the static line that's replaceable. A lot of folks wonder why the rocket is coming in "upside down" but never broke a fin while flying it.

I have the second build Cobra downstairs and it's flyable. Just gotta get new 12V batteries for ignition. My old bats are dead and I have to get new and recycle the old. Out in the boondocks it's hard to find someplace for recycling old batteries. Plus I have to do a lot of domestic work as my lovely wife died 3 and a half years ago and I have guardianship of a mentally handicapped son. He's not a problem and can be taken to launches and hotels.
(Especially if they have swimming pools. Wife made sure he learned how to swim in spite of his handicap!)

Still I have a lot of work to do as a single widower parent so rocket time is more restricted than when my lovely wife was alive and I was working! Am retired now but a lot of work to be done around the house. Don't want to downsize just yet.

She died at 57.5 and I'm 65 now. Was only 62 when she died.

Kurt

 

[brockrwood]

Nitrocellulose lacquer. I think the commercial stuff has an inhibitor in it but it usually doesn't make a difference as the pyrogen is what gets the job done. Just a protectant. One may purchase it from a Luthier supply company. (A place that sells supplies to people who hand make guitars.) Kurt

Ok! Got me 4 bottles of nail polish with the nitrocellulose in them. That’s gun cotton, right? I will try the silver one first as poor man’s pyrogen on DIY nichrome wire igniters.

If these don’t work on igniters, then I guess they will become bottles of rocket touch up paint.

 

[Steve Shannon]

Ok! Got me 4 bottles of nail polish with the nitrocellulose in them. That’s gun cotton, right? I will try the silver one first as poor man’s pyrogen on DIY nichrome wire igniters.

If these don’t work on igniters, then I guess they will become bottles of rocket touch up paint.

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Guncotton is one form of nitrocellulose. Not all nitrocellulose is guncotton. Nitrocellulose lacquer is not.
Guncotton is interesting because it has a lot of surface area in the fibers of the cotton. That makes it burn extremely quickly without transferring a lot of heat. That’s not what you want for an igniter. I’ve had a wad of guncotton set off in my palm without burning me. It just flashes.
Nitrocellulose lacquer should burn more slowly, thus transferring more heat. That’s better for use on an igniter. I would not light nitrocellulose lacquer in my palm.

 

[ksaves2]

Ok! Got me 4 bottles of nail polish with the nitrocellulose in them. That’s gun cotton, right? I will try the silver one first as poor man’s pyrogen on DIY nichrome wire igniters.

If these don’t work on igniters, then I guess they will become bottles of rocket touch up paint.

It doesn't matter what you're using as a diluent. It just matters what your pyrogen is. Can't discuss formulas on the open forum but I've tried and made a lot of BP and APCP home made igniters and they all work. If you want to go there, you can do a search online or talk to folks at a Tripoli club for specifics on formulas. I will say a bare nichrome wire can light off a small BP motor anytime but to do a Research motor with a home made igniter takes a bit of work. It took me a winter to master that and it takes "stuff" that is harder and harder for the average person to get now to make the igniters. Get the "fixin's" and a little goes a long ways. Oh BTW I did home made ematches during the time we thought that "regular" people wouldn't be able to buy the commercial ones. Turns out I bought a sh**load of them before they were temporarily cut off but I experimented with making my own ematches anyways and it was a PITA. They worked but I never flew them. Had too many of the commercial ones lying around. I would have tried my homemade ones in a rocket if the supply was cut off. Kurt

 

[Paul Howard]

***NOTE: This posting has been edited and corrected after it's original posting***

I have re-used my Estes igniters that did "Not-burn through" with good results.
I carefully bent them back into their "normal" shape, thin straight tweezers help in part of this step.
I took an A10-0T booster, cut it open with an X-Acto saw, crushed it to get the black powder out, then crushed the black-powder chunks down to, well, black,,,,,,,,,powder/dust using a small "mortar and pestle" and keep that re-powdered BP in a small shallow vial for easy "dipping".
I have used both clear Nitrocellulose Fingernail polish and Medium Gap-Filling Cyanoacrylate to put on the nichrome(?) filament wire then dipped the tip into the black-powder dust.
I marked the paper tabs on the igniters with "2X" to mean "2nd use".
Doing this method with both the Nitrocellulose Medium Gap filling Cyanoacrylate then dipping into the dusty Black Powder seems to work fine. The Med Cyanoacrylate might actually work better with black-powder coatings than the Nitrocellulose since the CA really wants to wick into the dusty black-powder and put that black-powder right next to the Nichrome Wire. I don't think the CA itself is acting as a "pyrogen", (I have not yet tried CA-only treated wires). Because the CA is bonding with a lot of carbon, it makes a fairly robust igniter tip, it's still sorta fragile, but not as fragile as you might expect.
I just launched 8 Mini-T (A10-3T's and A3-4T's) motors last weekend and I have 7 intact used igniters to re-use from that session, I hope to do the same treatment with those igniters tonight after work and go launch tomorrow.

Hopefully that's of some use.
Adios!-PTH

 

[4regt4]

I have re-used my Estes igniters that did Not-burn through with good results.
I carefully bent them back into their "normal" shape.
I took an A10-0T booster, cut it open with an X-Acto saw, crushed it to get the black powder out, then crushed the black-powder chunks down to, well, black,,,,,,,,,powder/dust using a small "mortar and pestle" and keep that re-powdered BP in a small shallow vial.
I have used both clear Nitrocellulose Fingernail polish and Thin Cyanoacrylate to put on the nichrome(?) filament wire then dipped the tip into the black-powder dust.
I marked the paper tabs on the igniters with "2X" to mean "2nd use".
Doing this method with both the Nitrocellulose and Thin Cyanoacrylate seems to work fine. Thin Cyanoacrylate might actually work better with black-powder coatings than the Nitrocellulose since the CA really wants to wick into the dusty black-powder and put that black-powder right next to the Nichrome Wire. I don't think the CA itself is acting as a "pyrogen", (I have not yet tried CA-only treated wires). Because the CA is bonding with a lot of carbon, it makes a fairly robust igniter tip, it's still sorta fragile, but not as fragile as you might expect.
I just launched 8 Mini-T (A10-3T's and A3-4T's) motors last weekend and I have 7 intact used igniters to re-use from that session, I hope to do the same treatment with those igniters tonight after work and go launch tomorrow.

Hopefully that's of some use.
Adios!-PTH

Hi Paul. Hans here.

I've been re-using any survivors by dipping them in ProCast. It's Viton rubber based with boron and potassium nitrate. Burns like crazy. The only problem is, once they've been ignited with the ProCast, they are toast. Nothing left.

I also dip any old Estes white tip igniters that I find with ProCast. Works great.

Hans.

 

[Paul Howard]

Hi Paul. Hans here.

I've been re-using any survivors by dipping them in ProCast. It's Viton rubber based with boron and potassium nitrate. Burns like crazy. The only problem is, once they've been ignited with the ProCast, they are toast. Nothing left.

I also dip any old Estes white tip igniters that I find with ProCast. Works great.

Hans.

Oh, Hey! Good to know! Where does one buy "ProCast"?

 

[4regt4]

Oh, Hey! Good to know! Where does one buy "ProCast"?

Quickburst.net

They have several products that are all interesting. Seems he gets by Hazmat and all sorts of other regs by simply shipping the unmixed ingredients.

Hans.

 

[BEC]

Dipping them in ProCast will certainly work. I’ve dipped a bunch of the much-maligned starters in that stuff and they work really well.

That said, as long as the bridge wire isn’t burnt through, if you get it against the propellant, the igniter will work. We used bare nichrome wrapped in a coil around the safety key for the launch controller “back in the day”, meaning the mid-1960s, for igniters.

But then, that’s what I posed in this thread back in June. Oh well….at least my story is consistent.

I’ve used the bare nichrome Quest igniters that come with MicroMaxx motors sometimes three or four times before the bridge wire burnt through.

 

[Paul Howard]

I got my igniters "re-built" last night with the Med Gap Filling CA and Black Powder, tested one, it worked nice and sparky with pizazz and hopefully I'll be using the rest this afternoon when I go out to launch.

 

[Paul Howard]

OK, I went out yesterday as planned and launched 9 times: 4 Estes Mini-T's, 3 Estes C6-3's and 2 Estes D12-3's with Re-Used/Re-Conditioned igniters, most of which used the Medium Gap-Filling Cyanoacrylate then dipped into Black Powder dust, a few had Nitro-cellulose & Black Powder Dust. They all worked well with no misfires.

The BEST/Fastest responses were the ones with Medium Gap-Fill CA. The Nitrocellulose & BP treated igniters had some delay.

Most (6? or 7?) of the igniters survived for a possible 3rd use. The CA & BP were the most intact looking. I was impressed and I'm now pretty convinced this is a really good way to go since I already keep CA on hand and I still have plenty of crushed BP dust in my dinky vial for a LOT more igniters.