Toss the tepanol. Are you looking for a job?
Anthony J. Cesaroni
President/CEO
Cesaroni Technology/Cesaroni Aerospace
<http://www.cesaronitech.com/> http://www.cesaronitech.com/
(941) 360-3100 x101 Sarasota
(905) 887-2370 x222 Toronto
From: arocket-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx <arocket-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> On Behalf
Of Wyatt Harris
Sent: Thursday, January 30, 2020 3:10 PM
To: arocket@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [AR] Introduction / getting started with APCP
Hi everyone,
I've been subscribed to AROCKET off an on for the last ~20 years, and I
believe this is my first post (I may have sent one when I followed this
forum back in high school, but I can't remember).
To provide a bit of an intro about myself, for those that care, or at least
to show that I'm not coming at this totally out of the blue:
I started building rocket motors in middle school and continued into high
school (early 2000's). They were almost all KNSB motors (thank you for your
website Richard Nakka!), with the exception of a large LOX/hybrid that I
built with a propulsion engineer from Raytheon, and launched at BALLS 2004.
I went on to get a BS in Astronautical Engineering, where as a senior I was
chief engineer for a boosted dart rocket project that was launched at WSMR
in 2009. Following college I got a MS in Mechanical Engineering, did some
other stuff for a few years, and am presently 1.5 years into a 3 year PhD
program in Astronautical Engineering (not researching anything propulsion
related however; I'm actually examining a GNC topic for spacecraft RPO).
To the subject of this email: I recently got back into building small rocket
motors as a hobby. I've made a few small KNSB motors, though I'm more
interested now in moving on to APCP. I have the APCP/HTPB kit from Firefox.
For the time being, I intend to build and test motors with <50g of
propellant.
I'm reaching out to the forum with the hope that this might be a good place
to get some advice on working with APCP (especially regarding safety, common
pitfalls and best practices). I've got and have read through Experimental
Composite Propellant, Plastic Resin Bonded Fuel Systems (Firefox book), the
CP technologies book (doesn't seem very helpful for APCP though), and I also
have Burnsim. I intend to proceed following the procedures outlined in the
first two books as closely as possible.
If this is the right place to ask, I suspect I'll have plenty of questions
moving forward, but to pose a couple to start:
(1) My main concern right now is proceeding safely, so any practical advice
out there regarding safe production of small APCP (<300g) batches? My
initial plan is to use an open garage with PPE including nitrile gloves,
goggles and VOC respirator. I've taken a look at the SDS's for the chemicals
involved, it seems that IPDI is is the nastiest component? The SDS for this
makes it sound very toxic.. how concerned should I be about this for the
small batches I'm making? Any concerns/things I should know about other
chemicals such as AP/HTPB/EHA/tepanol? I'm not planning to do any crazy
propellant formulations (exotic oxidizers/metals) at this point.
(2) I opened up the teponal (HX-878) from the kit and noted that it is
*extremely* viscous (challenging to remove any with a tongue depressor).
Since it's been a while since I bought the Firefox kit, wondering if this is
normal, or has it gone bad?
Thanks for reading the long email. Thank you in advance for any advice!
-Wyatt
