Ionic Fan - Is it really this easy?

Boogle · 21 Dec 2006 at 17:15

Bug One said:
Why would NASA spend millions developing rocket engines when they could just use a ducted fan.....

Because the ion drive provides as much force as an A4 sheet of paper does on your hand (via mavity). Its not going to get you into space, since mavity is going to stop you. But in space there are no strong forces of mavity (unless you're too close to a celestial body or black hole), or particles to cause friction. The ion drive in this case is really quite efficient, albeit taking a long, long time to get up to speed.

If the lack of force can be overcome, and power could be (relatively) infinite, then ion drive would be a very, very good form of propulsion imo. Whether future missions involving space exploration use ion drive, or something else - who knows? All we do know is that chemical propulsion can't be used much more, not if long-term space travel is to become a reality.

Application as a fan? Not too handy, since lack of airflow means its not going to do that much cooling

But for a silent PC with low TDP components, it does seem to work. BTW the tassels are rather lightweight:

Additionally we used some super light weight Mylar that I have for another project for the tassels, so that’s why the steamers are rather energetic.

Gashman · 21 Dec 2006 at 23:55

yeah, as a physics student i love ions and stuff like that (did essay about interstellar propulsion so i studied NASA's DS1 in great detail, the ion engine is pretty good for very very very long trips but rather crap for short trips and fans, they simply don't move enough propellant to be used for short journeys in space and likewise for computer fans, where they move little air :rolleyes:

but sure it would be silent, we did come up with the bizarre conclusion that multiple smaller ion engines produced more thrust than a single large one, and on the negetive side ions generally aren't friendly, causing static electric shocks and the likes, and static electricity + computer componants = disaster

.

this 'fan' will be crap without magnetism, since magnetism is a fundemental part of making an ion engine work, my next essay being 'particle and directed energy weapons'

and trying to 'perfect' the design of my robot wars robot weapon

the ULTIMATE flipper using magnetism :cool:

Hawk Tuah · 22 Dec 2006 at 01:49

Gashman said:
and trying to 'perfect' the design of my robot wars robot weapon the ULTIMATE flipper using magnetism

Well, its gonna have to be rather powerful. Wheely big cheese can throw another robot out the ring from the middle. Not sure how your magnetic tickle stick is going to be the 'ultimate' compared to that.

Boogle said:
bleh

You missed my point. There aint no air in space, so this wouldn't work. The ion drive NASA have been working on would be somewhat different. Ie like a ducted fan, it would be useless in a vacuum.

XtAsY · 22 Dec 2006 at 09:04

that is really cool! Going to have to try it out sometime

tuftyfella · 22 Dec 2006 at 09:39

Gashman said:
this 'fan' will be crap without magnetism, since magnetism is a fundemental part of making an ion engine work, my next essay being 'particle and directed energy weapons' and trying to 'perfect' the design of my robot wars robot weapon the ULTIMATE flipper using magnetism

amg, robot wars is still going?! aint seen it on TV with craig charles for years so presumed it had finished.

on a different note, would something like charged Fan Guards work?

say 3 so you have 2 charged the same and 1 charged differently to de-ionise the ionised air? grill would probably create a better draft than a few wires as its got a greater surface area. would look something like my crappy diagram below

:

| | | <- the grills in a parralil line up down a tube
+ - + <- the charge on the grills (could be 2 negative 1 positive?)

disclaimer: again, im no einstein so i could be talking crap

Hawk Tuah · 22 Dec 2006 at 10:34

tuftyfella said:
amg, robot wars is still going?! aint seen it on TV with craig charles for years so presumed it had finished.

on a different note, would something like charged Fan Guards work?

say 3 so you have 2 charged the same and 1 charged differently to de-ionise the ionised air? grill would probably create a better draft than a few wires as its got a greater surface area. would look something like my crappy diagram below :

| | | <- the grills in a parralil line up down a tube
+ - + <- the charge on the grills (could be 2 negative 1 positive?)

disclaimer: again, im no einstein so i could be talking crap

Eh. There has just been a new series of robot wars which has just finished with the final last weekend. Razor won it at last. Its on channel 5 on a sunday. Well, was.

Were some really great battles, and Wheely Big Cheese was amazing. Never seen a robot with so much power. It literally threw a robot from the middle of the ring, about 15 foot in the air all the way out of the ring. Unfortunately it conked out in the semi finals.

Check it out

tuftyfella · 22 Dec 2006 at 10:54

Bug One said:
Eh. There has just been a new series of robot wars which has just finished with the final last weekend. Razor won it at last. Its on channel 5 on a sunday. Well, was.

Were some really great battles, and Wheely Big Cheese was amazing. Never seen a robot with so much power. It literally threw a robot from the middle of the ring, about 15 foot in the air all the way out of the ring. Unfortunately it conked out in the semi finals.

Check it out

that'll be why then, i cant get channel 5 or digital where i live so never bother to look whats on it, thx for the link though

Gashman · 22 Dec 2006 at 18:53

Bug One said:
Well, its gonna have to be rather powerful. Wheely big cheese can throw another robot out the ring from the middle. Not sure how your magnetic tickle stick is going to be the 'ultimate' compared to that.

You missed my point. There aint no air in space, so this wouldn't work. The ion drive NASA have been working on would be somewhat different. Ie like a ducted fan, it would be useless in a vacuum.

lol its called a 'linear magnetic accelerator' look it up, its a brilliant principal, we were trying to use physics to design the ultimate robot wars machine, i mean a flipper based on a railgun

we built a minuture one in college in spare time (breaks between class) using copper rods and many many many capacitors, and everytime we pushed the little button the projectile welded the two rails together, so i though a ceramic or graphite slug would work better for this flipper design, the problem is it would have to be ejected and reloaded after each flip

we also toyed with the idea of using a gas turbine as the machines main powerplant but im not sure if its against the rules

and another thing was recoiling armour

proberbly well over the weight limit mind

Edit: and NASA's DS1 engine doesn't need air or anything, it uses xenon gas, which gets ionised via bombardment with electrons, then a magnetic field projects the ions out the back of the craft, generating forward thrust, pretty simple stuff really

Hawk Tuah · 22 Dec 2006 at 19:00

Gashman said:
lol its called a 'linear magnetic accelerator' look it up, its a brilliant principal, we were trying to use physics to design the ultimate robot wars machine, i mean a flipper based on a railgun we built a minuture one in college in spare time (breaks between class) using copper rods and many many many capacitors, and everytime we pushed the little button the projectile welded the two rails together, so i though a ceramic or graphite slug would work better for this flipper design, the problem is it would have to be ejected and reloaded after each flip we also toyed with the idea of using a gas turbine as the machines main powerplant but im not sure if its against the rules and another thing was recoiling armour proberbly well over the weight limit mind

Sounds interesting. However in Robot Wars, the KISS strategy usually works best. When I was at uni my mech eng department was working on fulerine strings. We were thinking of using one as a kind of cheese slice. Then adding fulerine armour plating. Now that would have kicked ass! I'm sure reactive armour is banned. You can't have any kind of projectile or explosives. One of my ideas was a nitro hammer. Inject a small amount of nitroglicerine into a cavity in the end of a hammer and hit them with that. BANG - and the robots gone.

Oh and linear magnetic accelerators. You mean like they use on those floating trains, and roller coasters.

Gashman said:
Edit: and NASA's DS1 engine doesn't need air or anything, it uses xenon gas, which gets ionised via bombardment with electrons, then a magnetic field projects the ions out the back of the craft, generating forward thrust, pretty simple stuff really

That was my point. The design I'm going to build would be useless in space because there's no air, whereas the NASA one works in a vacuum.

Gashman · 22 Dec 2006 at 19:35

a *** weapon is a good idea except *** is well, highly explosive and could end up with the robot using it going boom too

the magnetic accelerator would be handy but you'd need an engine to generate the electricity needed, a generator making a lot of current some capacitor banks to store the charge, plus the current would heat up the copper rails making them really hot, so they'd have to be cooled down between firings to avoid the whole welding problem or causing a fire, the armour was a good idea as well, made from four layers, the top layer being laminated polystyrene (in modular blocks, similar to space shuttles heatshield), the second layer was an aluminium meshing (the styrene blocks were mounted to this), the third was a rather thick layer of foam and the fourth layer being sheet aluminium (weighed virtually nothing) so when a weapon hit the outside the outer layer was meant to act as an ablative layer, it was there specifically to absorb kinetic energy and to be sacrificed (hence why it was little blocks like the shuttles heat shield) all the wiring was gonna go through aluminium foiled PVC piping to be routed to the specific areas of the machine, all the control mechanisms were going to be mounted in 'boxes' to protect from fire and other breaches of the armour, the powerplant would have been a housemade gas turbine and DC electric generator and two 12V starter motors driving two catapillar style tracks, also adds to the modular theme of the machine, pity it was never built

all designed on paper and in studio max 8

Hawk Tuah · 22 Dec 2006 at 21:22

Gashman said:
a *** weapon is a good idea except *** is well, highly explosive and could end up with the robot using it going boom too the magnetic accelerator would be handy but you'd need an engine to generate the electricity needed, a generator making a lot of current some capacitor banks to store the charge, plus the current would heat up the copper rails making them really hot, so they'd have to be cooled down between firings to avoid the whole welding problem or causing a fire, the armour was a good idea as well, made from four layers, the top layer being laminated polystyrene (in modular blocks, similar to space shuttles heatshield), the second layer was an aluminium meshing (the styrene blocks were mounted to this), the third was a rather thick layer of foam and the fourth layer being sheet aluminium (weighed virtually nothing) so when a weapon hit the outside the outer layer was meant to act as an ablative layer, it was there specifically to absorb kinetic energy and to be sacrificed (hence why it was little blocks like the shuttles heat shield) all the wiring was gonna go through aluminium foiled PVC piping to be routed to the specific areas of the machine, all the control mechanisms were going to be mounted in 'boxes' to protect from fire and other breaches of the armour, the powerplant would have been a housemade gas turbine and DC electric generator and two 12V starter motors driving two catapillar style tracks, also adds to the modular theme of the machine, pity it was never built all designed on paper and in studio max 8

Ha ha - sounds heavy, inefficient and very likely to break with the slightest knock.

While you're there charging your welding rod, sitting underneath polystyrene armour, your opponent would have got underneath you and flipped you over onto the arena flamer.

Gashman · 22 Dec 2006 at 22:31

Bug One said:
Ha ha - sounds heavy, inefficient and very likely to break with the slightest knock.

While you're there charging your welding rod, sitting underneath polystyrene armour, your opponent would have got underneath you and flipped you over onto the arena flamer.

the joys of lamination and the likes

and the thing could happily drive around on fire

and finally it wouldn't weld the rails due to the graphite slug rather than a metallic one :cool:

im a bit opposed to polystyrene as well by the way just so you know, my original idea was something tough as hell, pretty much 100% fire resistant with immense pushing power/traction with one helluva flipper

Gashman · 22 Dec 2006 at 22:32

why did it get censored? :confused:

Hawk Tuah · 23 Dec 2006 at 20:40

Gashman said:
why did it get censored?

what did you type. N.O.S?

Things like that got censors as they 'lowered the tone' around here.

Gashman · 23 Dec 2006 at 23:42

lol jesus the censored me cause i typed that, thats just bizarre, wasn't aware nitrous oxide was illegal or anything, nothing on forum rules about it? :confused:

Hawk Tuah · 24 Dec 2006 at 00:09

Gashman said:
lol jesus the censored me cause i typed that, thats just bizarre, wasn't aware nitrous oxide was illegal or anything, nothing on forum rules about it?

Its not. Its just the acronyms. Plus other 'l33t' speek, as such.

Gashman · 24 Dec 2006 at 15:41

i see, well thats good because you can't understand all this acronyms and stuff, i hate them to be honest

sablabra · 6 Jan 2007 at 13:55

Have you built this **** yet?

joeyjojo · 6 Jan 2007 at 13:58

Nice language :rolleyes:

WJA96 · 6 Jan 2007 at 14:29

sablabra said:
Have you built this **** yet?

Clean it up please! Young people read this stuff you know.