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The highlight of my freshman year at Tufts was definitely the hundreds of hours I poured into the team rocket project. I started on the Recovery team and then joined the Payload team before the fall semester ended. Come spring semester, I developed a passion for all things rocketry and essentially joined every sub-team. I manufactured fins, bulkheads, and the airbrakes assembly. I helped epoxy and integrate the entire airframe. During the testing phase, I often loaded the energetics, helped with GPS validation, built a custom battery with a continuous runtime of over 100 hours for the payload, and much more. From then on, I was hooked for life.
This is the full OnShape file for TR4 Kindlevan
Tufts Rocketry holding Kindlevan up in front of a Midland, TX sunset the night before launch.
KINDLEVAN Preliminary Design Review.pdfTeam100_Tufts University_Project Technical Report.pdfThis year at IREC, we placed 8th overall out of 144 teams and we placed 5th in the 10k COTs category! I am immensely proud of my contributions to this achievement and am excited to see what I can do on the next rocket.
Rocket found and recovered with no damage!
Manufacturing
Manufacturing
I used the waterjet to cut the fin mounts (left) and the airbrakes frame (middle). I also used a Bridgeport Mill to manually shape aluminum 6061 stock into the payload sides (right).
I spent likely over 40 hours on the mill alone, patiently cutting down aluminum stock to size. I also drilled the holes to connect the payload sides together with a drill press.
I also helped with the CAD (shown above) when we needed to shrink the wall thickness to reduce weight.
Additionally I co-designed and built the battery (blue/purple, above) that could last over 100 hours in case the rocket needed to be quarantined over night.
Test Flights 1 & 2
Test Flights 1 & 2
Spoiler alert, but test flight 2 does not go nearly as well as the first. The rocket nozzle experienced a significant anomaly which caused the propellant to eject sideways, sending it into a catastrophic spin.
Luckily, the electronics and other irreplaceable parts of the rocket were undamaged.
Repair & Final Touches
Repair & Final Touches
The damage from the test flight was mostly in the booster section, as several centering rings had been crushed from impact with the ground. I used a heat gun to strip the epoxy off the entire booster and we were able to salvage both fiberglass tubes.
Then, I set about re-epoxying the whole thing, making new centering rings from fiberglass on the waterjet. I made a jig (left) to make sure that the alignment ring was epoxied on level because I noticed the first version of the booster's was askew.
The rocket demolition job and rebuild only took a couple weeks, and we were able to get it wrapped before the competition (left, below)! Before IREC, the payload was groundtested with the battery and computer both installed (below).
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