Youtuber tests 3D printed rocket engine with hidden cooling channels inside walls
SMRTR summary
A hobbyist rocket builder armed with nothing but a consumer 3D printer and a bold question: can plastic survive fire? YouTuber Mr. More Gooder has been testing whether water cooling can save a fully 3D printed rocket engine from melting itself into oblivion.
The answer, it turns out, is: kind of.
Early versions without cooling failed almost instantly, the combustion chamber softening within seconds of ignition. A redesigned double-walled engine, with water pumped continuously through internal channels, lasted significantly longer. But uncooled sections of the nozzle still sagged and dripped molten plastic.
A fully cooled version showed real promise until coolant leaked into the combustion chamber and killed the flame.
The deeper problem is physics. Standard printing plastics conduct heat poorly, meaning walls get dangerously hot before coolant can do its job. "The cooled section held up well, but the other section, not so much," the creator noted.
The experiment failed to produce a working engine, but proved the concept has legs, or at least, a fighting chance.
SMRTR provides this summary for quick context. The original article belongs to Interesting Engineering.
Read the original article