24mm Water Tower Rocket XL

thingiverse

A fun and interesting rocket modelled after an older style water tower made to fly of 24mm motors (Estes E, for example). It launches off a 1/4" launch rod. I do not recommend you fly this on anything less than an E. To build this rocket you will need the following:A 38oz Nestle's Quik can. BT-80 (66mm) body tube, about 200mm of it. You'll be cutting this to length during assembly.BT-50 (24mm) body tube for the motor mount. 95mm of this will accommodate an Estes E motor.Shock cord. I used Kevlar line.A 30" parachute.4 8mm Carbon Fiber tubes about 30" long. I used arrow shafts.And of course the 3D printed parts included in this design. I recommend using Polymaker LW-PLA (pre-foamed so it prints like regular PLA) to save some weight, but this should fly with regular PLA.As you're building, consider your paint scheme. For the example photo in this thing I assembled the tank unit and painted that yellow. Then I assembled the legs and painted that red. The guard rail, top, nosecone and ladders all got their own coat of red. The feet were painted like concrete. Once all this was painted I finished the assembly.Assembly Instructions:1) glue the 24mm motor tube into the "bottom" piece. The bottom of the motor tube should be flush with the bottom of the bottom piece (where the retainer twists on).2) glue the "engine block" piece on top of the motor tube.3) run your kevlar shock cord through the hole in the engine block piece and tie it around the motor tube below. Add glue to keep it from unravelling. Coil up the shock cord and put it inside the motor tube to keep it out of the way for a bit.4) Prep your Nestle's Quik container by cutting the bottom and top lips off. I did this by running an x-acto knife along the metal of the bottom edge, and along the plastic lid for the top edge. Smooth these edges out with a big piece of sand paper on a table.5) Glue one side of this container to the top of the "bottom" piece. You might want to test fit it first to practice the operation.6) Glue the 66mm tube over the motor retainer and down into the bottom piece. There are slots in the internal "fins" in this piece to accept the 66mm tube.While these two tubes are drying, you can use the "top" piece to keep them aligned, but do NOT glue that piece on yet.7) Once those tubes are dry, remove the top piece if you used it for alignment, and glue the "Guard Rail" piece down against the Bottom piece.8) Put the 4 carbon fiber tubes through the "cross brace" piece until that brace is about half way. Measure and make marks on the rods from the top so you have the brace aligned the same distance and glue it in place. Be careful with this step because you could twist a rod and break the cross brace.9) Glue the tops of the rods into the bottom piece to finish forming the legs.10) Measure the distance from the bottom of the cross brace to the bottom of the rods for each leg and assuming you're not perfect, cut them all to the length of the shortest one. Then glue on the feet. They're angled so rotate them so they rest flat.11) Glue the "Top" piece on the tank.12) Glue the "TopLadder" flush with the top of the guard rail over one corner (leg) of the water tower. Then glue sections of the "Ladder" piece to finish the ladder going down. You'll have to cut one ladder section short when you get to the bottom.13) Push the Shock cord through the rocket and attach the nosecone and a parachute. I put some flame resistant cloth on the line first so that I wouldn't have to use wadding.There are two retainers included in the design. The regular motor retainer is for standard motors that do NOT have a lip on them, like Estes E motors. The "AT" motor retainer is designed for motors WITH a lip, like Aerotech composite motors. It has additional space at the bottom to accommodate that lip. This rocket is close to the weight limit for an Estes E12 motor, so I am not certain it will fly well on that. I recommend only using composite motors like an E26 or E30. The sample flight below was on an E30.Decorate the rocket to your tastes. I chose the Warner Brothers theme from the Animaniac's cartoon series. Of course I had to add the Warner Brothers (and sister too!) to my model. You can find those here (https://cults3d.com/en/3d-model/art/yakko-dot-and-wakko-animaniacs). I had to edit those in tinkercad, assembling them, then scaling them, then shortening Yakko and Wakko's tails and finally angling Wakko's head up so everything would fit. As it's someone else's design, I cannot include them here.Launch Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NZKQlAOFgWYOh, and special bonus, this is my 100th design on Thingiverse! WOOT!