This project was inspired by a fun activity we saw someone doing at a park with construction paper, air compressor, and a fun grandpa with is kids. I am not a grandpa, but I do have kids.  

The idea is, You build a PVC chamber of some sort, and place a valve on the end. In my case I placed a sprinkler valve. 

I then wired the sprinkler valve to an arcade button and powered it with some 9 volt batteries, later upgraded to a Dewalt battery adapter.

Then you pressurize the chamber, press the button, and launch. 

The paper rockets could not handle that much pressure, so I thought, “Hey I like 3d printing, and I like attempting to design stuff” so here we are. 

This project contains most of my iterations thus far, please feel free to expand and upgrade the project as you wish. All the CAD files are attached. 

NOTE: one thing that was fun about the paper rockets was that the kids got to pick colors, cut out their own fins, make their nose cones, and design them. So I tried to keep that idea in mind. 

• ITERATIONS:
  1. Making the rocket. I glued a cap on top so that the air pressure would not escape and lift off. 
  2. Making a nose cone so I could later design different nose cones for kids to choose from. 
  3. Printed in PLA, this worked well on lift off, but hitting the ground was not pretty lol. (to be expected, needed a test run)
  4. Tried to make a parachute cap that would fall off so a parachute could deploy. (never really got this one working, but still put it on here for fun and ideas)
  5. Created a way for kids to pick the fins they want to design their own rocket.  
  6. Buy a Bambu labs (went with P1S) cause I did not like my other printer.
  7. Printed rocket in TPU with hollow nose cone and printed a small plug and glued it in the tip to trap the air pressure.
  8. Hollow nose broke on impact. 

  9. Final design, as of now, created a rocket body with the 15mm tip filled in to trap air pressure, and filled the nose cone. This worked well and is the design in the video.

      

TPU Nose Cone Hollow Print:

Blastoff: