Tornado Tubes for Science and Water Rockets

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U.S. Water Rockets
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Tornado Tubes for Science and Water Rockets

Post by U.S. Water Rockets »

We've designed the perfect Tornado Tube for our water rockets, and put it out for everyone to use.

Tornado Tubes actually come from educational science materials. They are a coupler that will link a pair of soft-drink bottles together, so that a demonstration of a Vortex can be created easily in science classed. The standard design was quickly identified by people in the Water Rocket community as a way to make larger water rockets by linking bottles together for increased volume.

However, the science toy tornado tubes are not ideal for water rockets because they have a constricted throat that reduces flow, and they were never meant to contain high pressures.

We designed our Tornado Tube specifically for Water Rockets. They have a fully unrestricted mouth, and our innovative external o-ring sealing system. We've tested the designs to 200PSI (the bottled burst before the print fails).

Check out a video showing our practical application of 3D printing:
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j6wLRHK3ATE[/youtube]
Mac The Knife
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Re: Tornado Tubes for Science and Water Rockets

Post by Mac The Knife »

Watching the end of the video, placing components with tweezers, It occurred to me that you need to replace your hotend with a vacuum pick up, and figure out how to use your printer for a pick and place machine.
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Re: Tornado Tubes for Science and Water Rockets

Post by U.S. Water Rockets »

Mac The Knife wrote:Watching the end of the video, placing components with tweezers, It occurred to me that you need to replace your hotend with a vacuum pick up, and figure out how to use your printer for a pick and place machine.
That's a great idea! The thing is I only have the one printer and it runs pretty much all the time, so I'd never be able to get time to do it. When the Eris comes out, I might give it some consideration.

On second thought, it has a large enough build area for the boards I usually make, but it might not have the room for the parts to pick from.
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Re: Tornado Tubes for Science and Water Rockets

Post by Captain Starfish »

Neat little design and great to see another commercial product coming off these.

Re Pick n Place: orientation issues might mean the need for a 4th axis (spin on the pickup) and there's often enough slop in the QFN etc part trays to mean a pickup and drop based solely on mechanical positioning of the PCB and part tray will lead to positioning being a pin out. If you have a bit of a search there's one or two open source imaging pick and place projects out there that do it properly with video registration and alignment. Some cool thinking and project work!
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Re: Tornado Tubes for Science and Water Rockets

Post by geneb »

If you do a lot of boards, it would probably be very much worth it to pick up a cheap Kossel kit and build a dedicated Pick n' Place machine out of it - ever one I've ever seen has been a delta anyway. :)

Is that "solder paste" you're wiping on the board with the mask?

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