
This is a the largest engine i ever built, resting on the test stand after becoming the state boulder toss champion. Think the final numbers after pump head calculations with the brayton cycle was 55,000hp at the turbo, 650,000 lbs of thrust at the load cell. Took me about 4 months, with one of those months working 16hrs a day to build the turbos, regen circuits, preburners, injectors, controllers, harnesses, and integrate it all. I was homeless and sleeping in the shops parking lot when i wasnt turning wrenches. Flew for a few glorious minutes before splashing down in the Atlantic and sinking peacefully into the deep blue.
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Kinda! It's a multi step process that includes vacuum welding of the copper liner and deposition of inconel particles that then allow a normal mig table welding robot to lay down a heavier and stiffer inconel jacket. That preserves the thousands of copper strips and ribs that make up the cooling channels of the regenerative circuit. Any internal defects can be hit with an electron beam welder after xray inspections.
Woah, lot cooler than what I imagined. Heh, cooler.
The inconel/copper matrix sounds kinda like the steel/carbide matrix a friend's playing with, building up abrasion resistant hardfacing on bucket cutting edges. They sorta dribble chipped tungsten carbide into the weld pool just behind the arc and it works real well. His 'robot' is just a track torch from the '60s with the mig gun hose clamped onto it, haha.
Imagine the copper's for heat transfer since inconel's pretty doggone insulating so far as metals go. Really neat stuff, bud!
The inconel/copper matrix sounds kinda like the steel/carbide matrix a friend's playing with, building up abrasion resistant hardfacing on bucket cutting edges. They sorta dribble chipped tungsten carbide into the weld pool just behind the arc and it works real well. His 'robot' is just a track torch from the '60s with the mig gun hose clamped onto it, haha.
Imagine the copper's for heat transfer since inconel's pretty doggone insulating so far as metals go. Really neat stuff, bud!
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