Recovery
CuInspace
2024-2025
INFO
Due to achieving a successful reefed flight in our 2024 rocket we were now able to implement the same system on our upcoming hybrid rocket and sport flight rocket (Old El Blasto) in 2025. However, there are still lessons learnt from the competition such as: it is not very convenient to assemble the entire recovery system under high time limited scenarios, naming convention needs to be improved for better understanding of the system by the competition judges and all 3D printed housings can be further decreased in size to save space and weight. With these goals in mind we moved onto the next iteration of the Cu-Inspace recovery reefing system.
Receiving Boxes
The previously known backboxes 3D printed housing, has now been changed to receiving boxes. The design now only houses an altimeter in one box and Custom Pico-PCB in the second box. This allows for the design to shrink to almost 50% less than last year. The design process was undertook by a new member, guided by me throughout the year to refine and reach the desired goals. The box is now built around our line cutting device (Mako) and makes use of embedded nuts within the 3D printed housing to strengthen the structural integrity of the housing, rather than threading the material directly the screws now pass through holes and thread into the hex nut present inside.
Transmitting Garage Door (TGD)
The purple box has now been renamed to Transmitting Garage Door, or TGD. Due to the nature of the housing being inserted via a rail mount into the side of our parachute bay the name was devised. TGD now houses a 18650 battery for the IREC competition and a lithium ion battery for the Launch Canada competition. The transmitting Pico-PCB is now attached to the curved outer surface using screws and standoffs with the screw switch being attached to one of the rails. A small cutout at the bottom allows for wires from the avionic stack on the other end of bulkhead to be passed through and be connected to the PCB, to allow for a signal from the altimeter at 1500 ft to dis-reef. The design was completed by another member of the team with regular feedback from me and multiple other senior leads.
Parachute Bay
The entire recovery system now rests within a custom made parachute bay. This houses the two receiving boxes, the TGD and the full parachute package. It has been designed to ensure that during arming at the launch pad the components inside do not move from their original position and no fabric intervenes in the arming procedure. This solves our issues of a clean assembly and gives an overall easier package to work with. The original plan was to manufacture the bay using composite materials however due to the complex shape to fit all components a mold could not be created to accurately perform layups for the shape. Instead it is 3D printed using ABS as the filament material.
SRAD Recovery Body Tubes
This was the first year of Cu-Inspace history that we designed and manufactured our own carbon fiber body tubes. This was done by making use of a tolerance fit mandrel to act as a mold over which carbon fiber rolls were wound manually, while applying epoxy resin.
Full CAD Assembly
Hybrid Rocket Ejection Test
Full Vertical Stack Hybrid Rocket Post Arming
Final Recovery Assembly Before Rocket Full Stack
Dis-arming Energetics Post Recovery
Arming Energetics Pre-Launch
Full Stack Hybrid Rocket
Post Recovery Transferring Rocket Body Tube Back To Recovery Tent
Full Hybrid Recovery System Stack
Live Reefing Of Old El Blasto
Results
The hybrid rocket had a nominal lift-off, however due to issues with the rockets' slenderness ratio we faced shredding in our couplers, resulting in early deployment of the recovery system. We were able to recover few recovery electronics along with our SRAD body tube intact and unfortunately the full parachute and reefing electronics went ballistic in the forest with no signs of recovering any hardware even after two long hikes through the woods.
The launch of our sport flight Old El Blasto, which incorporated the same reefing system as the hybrid and the parachute from Mctriple (LC 2024 Rocket), had a nominal launch and recovery, thus bringing our record of successful reefing to 2 years in a row.