Pained back, sore arms = progress!
Yesterday, I built the Propulsor Zero test stand. Finishing last night, I feel very confident in the strength of the build. Yipee!
Some highlights of the build below.
CAD rendering of the plan:
Raw materials. Mild hot rolled steel 1/16 square tubes.
T Junction. I may weld this at some point.
Assemble with bottom bars and S-type load cells (100kg each)
Cross beams installed (2″ wide, 1/16 thick), with S-Type load cells between the beam and T-junction beam. LOAD CELLS EVERYWHERE! 🙂
Motor mounted yipee! Had to jig it up to the right level with boxes and scrap wood. From there it was just some blind drilling and bolt size cleverness to get the bolts to fit snugly in the pre-drilled motor holes without much wiggle.
The final product:
Ran the motor for 5 minutes without complaints! Very little vibration and no oscillations of the structure.
Next step? Instrumentation.
All those load cell wires gotta go somewhere!
Plus, tying in digital vibration monitoring, a digital shaft encoder, and digital current monitoring.
Stay tuned!
Jonny Hyman 