Nearspace Environmental Chamber

November 16, 2013 by Brian Benchoff 30 Comments

vacuum

If you’re going to send some hardware up to 100,000 feet, where atmospheric pressure is 1% of what we enjoy on the surface and temperatures swing down to where Fahrenheit and Celsius don’t matter anymore, you might want to do a bit of testing to make sure everything works before launch. With a few bits of PVC, though, that’s a piece of cake.

There were several environmental conditions to take into consideration; the near vacuum experienced by high altitude balloons would be replicated by a refrigerator compressor, the increased solar flux is simulated by a light bulb, and the cold temperatures provided by a chunk of dry ice.

For a proper high altitude, low temperature environmental chamber the test payload should be cooled down via radiation with tubes filled with liquid nitrogen embedded in the walls. This is the NASA way of doing things, but for the budget of $200, [arko]’s chamber simulates a high altitude environment just fine.

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A Sublime PVC Cannon

September 15, 2013 by Brian Benchoff 24 Comments

PVC

Not to be outdone with hair spray powered PVC cannons, [William] created an even cooler device: a cannon powered by dry ice.

Once dry ice is loaded into the pressure vessel, a burst disk is placed in the breech and the barrel is screwed on. The trigger isn’t very precise – the entire gun is powered by dry ice turning from a solid into a gas – but the resulting cloudy booms more than make up for any imperfections.

Despite building a cannon and using PVC as a pressure vessel, [Bill]’s project is actually quite safe. The ‘trigger’ is a burst valve made out of a disc of aluminum foil held between two sections of PVC. When the pressure rises, the aluminum foil inevitably tears, shooting whatever is in the barrel out and hopefully not into an eye. The ‘safety’ on the gun is a ball valve connected directly to the pressure vessel, and with a pressure gauge and a release valve. We’re more than confident in saying this is pretty darn safe as far as PVC cannons are concerned.

How NOT To Make Ground-hugging Fog

October 29, 2012 by Mike Szczys 35 Comments

Poor [Todd Harrison] spent all of Saturday and Sunday trying to make some ground-hugging fog for his Halloween decor. His fog machine hack turned out to be an utter failure. But he admits it and reports that he still had a lot of fun. Don’t feel bad [Todd], this happens to everyone from time to time. And anyone that has doubts about [Todd’s] skills need not look very far to find out that he does know what he’s doing.

The project started off with a theater-style fog machine. The problem is that this fills a room with a thin foggy-haze that doesn’t take shape outdoors. He wanted that ankle-deep graveyard effect and had seen several examples online that use a fog-machine with a bucked of dry ice. He though he’d just use his own bucket full of regular ice and salt water. Inside the bucket seen above there is a 15′ coil of copper tubing through which the fog machine’s output is passed. On the other side of the bucket there’s a plastic tube that goes to a sheet of plastic meant to distribute the cooled fog.

The problem here is that the fog machine puts out a hot mist. When it hits the ice bath the mist condenses into liquid form and that’s the end of the fog. As he attests in the video after the break, the dry-ice fog hack isn’t pumping out fog. It’s just using the heated steam to pump out carbon-dioxide vapor boiling off of the dry ice.

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Force Carbonating Root Beer With Dry Ice

July 27, 2012 by Mike Szczys 49 Comments

[Paul] is sick and tired of his homemade root beer being flat. He analyzed the problem with his carbonation techniques and ended up with a method of force carbonating beverages using dry ice.

He starts of by discussing the various methods that are used to carbonate beverages. There’s the old yeast and sugar trick that takes place inside of a sealed bottle. But this takes time, and if you don’t calculate the mixture correctly you could have over or under carbonated bottles (or exploding bottles in the case of glass beer bottling). [Paul] himself has tried the dry ice in a cooler full of root beer method. The problem is that the cooler isn’t pressurized so the carbonation level is very low. You need to have cold temperatures, high pressure, and the presence of carbon dioxide all at the same time in order to achieve high levels of carbonation.

His solution is to use a 60 PSI safety valve. He drilled a hole in a plastic bottle cap to receive the valve. He then drops a few chunks of dry ice in and seals it up. The valve will automatically release the gas as the pressure builds past the 60 PSI mark. What he ends up with is a highly carbonated beverage in a matter of minutes.

If you don’t mind spending some cash you can use an adjustable pressure regulator. This way you can carbonate just about anything.

[Thanks Steven]

Dry Ice Cannon

August 11, 2009 by Caleb Kraft 19 Comments

[vimeo= http://vimeo.com/6034556%5D

[Alexander] sent in his entry into a “creativity contest” at his university. He and some friends put together this dry ice cannon. Take note of the creative mechanism they used to mix the water with the dry ice. A large amount of gas is expelled as soon as the two begin to meet. If the gas is supposed to escape through the same opening, it is difficult to get all the material through. They have added a second opening just for the exhaust during mixing. Great job guys. How about some downloadable plans.