There are lots of cool paper rocketry models to build.
And if you want to launch them, issue 15 of Make Magazine has the instructions on how to build a launcher or they even sell a kit.
Archive for the ‘Science and Technology’ Category
Paper Rocketry
Thursday, March 4th, 2010Mendel Reprap construction notes
Monday, February 15th, 2010I keep meaning to make some notes, just so I have some record of the construction
- Before capturing the captured nuts for the stud rods that drive the axes, make sure they’re the right diameter nuts, they fit on the rods and aren’t chewed (fortunately this didn’t turn out to be the case even though it looked like it was)
- Captured nuts suck
- That conclusion was arrived at after some hours of assembling the vert bearing 180 and getting the nuts into the x-axis side plate nut jig
- Your construction area needs to have space for laptops as well as tools and parts, which means you’re going to need power boards
- We decided to drop the X-axis side plate nut jig (x-axis-side-plate-nut-jig_2off.par) because it doesn’t actually seem to serve any purpose other than holding the nuts stable, (we can use loctite for that). It’s not like it holds the nuts in place if they’re in tension, and it doesn’t get compressed as far as we can see, and keeping the nuts trapped is a pain to get them in there, a pain to then screw the bolts into them, and as we discovered the width of the vert bearing 180 between the two x-axis rods is so wide that it means the two rods are too far apart to fit into the idler bracket. This may have been because we didn’t file off the rafts enough. But it’ll need to be cut down somewhere to get the x axis rods into both the vert bearing 180 and the idler bracket.
- Don’t do the bolts up when they’re around the vertical stud rods becaus they’re not meant to be there
- If you have no idea what this means, the diagrams are at http://objects.reprap.org/wiki/Mendel_X-axis
- Local kerbside chuckouts are great for PC power supplies to power your machine
- Buy more of the allen keys that you’ll need for your reprap so more people can work on it at once
World Solar Challenge 2009 – Darwin to Adelaide
Tuesday, October 20th, 2009Once again teams are gathering in Darwin in Australia’s Northern Territory to ready their solar powered vehicles for the challenge (not race 
of driving 3000km to Adelaide in South Australia.
The big news so far this year is that the favourite contenders Nuna have had an accident that severely damaged their ($1.8 million) solar array and are having to use their backup.
Meanwhile Western Australian High School team Leeming and their car Hammerhead have arrived in Darwin and are preparing for scrutineering and the race.
World Solar Challenge 2009 – Darwin to Adelaide
Tuesday, October 20th, 2009Once again teams are gathering in Darwin in Australia’s Northern Territory to ready their solar powered vehicles for the challenge (not race of driving 3000km to Adelaide in South Australia.
The big news so far this year is that the favourite contenders Nuna have had an accident that severely damaged their ($1.8 million) solar array and are having to use their backup.
Meanwhile Western Australian High School team Leeming and their car Hammerhead have arrived in Darwin and are preparing for scrutineering and the race.
World Solar Challenge 2009 – Darwin to Adelaide
Tuesday, October 20th, 2009Once again teams are gathering in Darwin in Australia’s Northern Territory to ready their solar powered vehicles for the challenge (not race of driving 3000km to Adelaide in South Australia.
The big news so far this year is that the favourite contenders Nuna have had an accident that severely damaged their ($1.8 million) solar array and are having to use their backup.
Meanwhile Western Australian High School team Leeming and their car Hammerhead have arrived in Darwin and are preparing for scrutineering and the race.
Mullewa riots over Square Kilometre Array royalties?
Tuesday, May 12th, 2009Channel Nine’s reports on the Mullewa riots, which have apparently been going on for four days so far seem to indicate that they started over a dispute about royalties over a “million dollar telescope”, which is presumably the Square Kilometre Array, or Murchison Widefield Array? Can’t find any online links that mention that though.
Ecoflow at Perth Sun Fair
Wednesday, April 22nd, 2009I didn’t get to the Perth Sun Fair at UWA this year, so went to the Sun Fair’s web site to check out the exhibitors. Amongst them I noticed Ecoflow, who claim to be able to reduce fuel costs by between 5 and 20%, probably by the use of magnets. (Ecoflow is advertised on their site as a “Low cost home based business… No risk with genuine ethical company”). They also offer a range of products for horses, cats, dogs, and even people.
There’s a nice page talking about Ecoflow from an engineering perspective here.
Maybe the Firepower fuel additive guys should have had a look at Ecoflow’s technology instead? 
Australian net censorship + NBN = NPN
Tuesday, April 7th, 2009Australian Government’s Internet Censorship + National Broadband Network = National Porn-banned Network
Perth Sun Fair 2009
Sunday, April 5th, 2009A reminder (seeing as I forgot!) that the Perth Sun Fair’s on today (Sunday) at UWA.
Kevin Rudd meets Chinese propaganda chief in secret
Wednesday, March 25th, 2009The Australian reports that Kevin Rudd met with Chinese propaganda, media and ideology chief Li Changchun in secret before heading to Washington.
Perhaps our Prime Minister is getting some hints on how to implement the Great Firewall of Australia as part of the new Australian internet censorship scheme.
