03-20-2022, 11:47 PM
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Too Many Initiators is Never Enough
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Join Date: Mar 2005
Location: San Diego, CA
Posts: 2,404
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Quote:
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Originally Posted by Gus
Scott,
The problem, as I understand it, is that since Euclid sold a number of the key employees who were there have retired. Apparently the secret sauce to making those exceptionally high quality glassine covered tubes is no longer there.
Another friend tried years ago to have someone with the same machines make similar tubes and was told they had no idea how it was done. It's amazing that these tubes which we all take for granted are actually so exceptional.
Of note, there are no similar tubes commonly available in Europe or China. The U.S. team routinely uses Estes-style tubes as disposable piston tubes. The Europeans have nothing similar available so their pistons are all made of fiberglass. If any of you have built any of the Das Model German kits you have seen how bad tubes can be. You would think the Chinese can copy anything but apparently not. Estes has the tubes made here and shipped to China for assembly into kits.
Hopefully, a tube solution will come before long.
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We had a similar issue when I was at AeroTech.
The vendor who produced the paper-phenolic tubing used for motor casing had an ongoing quality issue.
When AeroTech started an order of paper-phenolic tubing would last many many months. The quality was excellent.
When AeroTech began ordering tubing every 3-4 months the tubing quality was all over the place.
What we learned was that the vendor started out new employees in the worst, most difficult department in the company-making paper-phenolic, fiberglass and other composite tubing. The rookies were to remain in that department until they could create an good run of tubing and then would be transferred out of the department and another group of rookies would come in and the whole process would start over.
We could tell when this would happen as we would get poor quality tubing and then the quality would improve until we received bad tubing and the cycle would start over again.
This would eventually drive AeroTech to create molded casing for the single-use motors.
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Bob
S.A.M. # 0014
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