Blog Creation and Plumbing

This is the start of the blog for the AMP-1 Rocket Engine project, a bi-propellant liquid/gas fueled uncooled rocket engine. This blog has been created after many hours of work already completed so it will jump right into the project. I'll work on adding some pre-blog work I've done at a later time. For now it will start today, 11/20/18, with some of the work that has been done recently.

Fittings and Stainless Steel Tubing

Today, a shipment of fittings and stainless-steel tubing arrived for plumbing of the test stand. To ease construction time and increase quality of the finished product, Swagelok equivalent fittings were bought. This brand of fittings called Yor-Lok are made of 316 Stainless and will suit this application well as they have high corrosion resistance. Some inline check valves for the fuel lines and hex nipples were also bought to connect all the brass tees to form a manifold going to the fuel tank. Overall, most of the fittings have been purchased in preparation for plumbing up the test stand. The next major step is to construct the fuel tank and test that. Some high torque servos were purchased to move the high pressure ball valves. The estimated torque required was 50 in-lbs so to insure proper operation, 380 in-lb capable servos were decided upon. This will easily overcome the static friction of the ball valves when under high pressure liquid and gas.

Close up of Yor-Lok 3/8" Pipe Adapter

The Yor-lok fittings are a two piece ferrule design for excellent sealing capabilities in high temperature and pressure fluctuating applications such as this project. Though somewhat expensive, they are highly reliable, simple to use and on par with industry use making them an easy choice. The check valves purchased should allow for unrestricted flow of the propellants during the hot fire tests and should also combat chugging of the engine normally seen by amateur rocketeers during hot fire tests.

As a mock up to see the layout of the supply manifold going into the fuel tank, some of the fittings were threaded together and roughly placed in location on the test stand.