About CD3 Recovery Systems
Growing up in the late 1900’s has exposed us to the birth and evolution of rocketry in the United States, not only in government activities, but in the hobby and amateur realm as well. This interest and growth in hobby rocketry has created an industry that now provides products to rocketeers, from the entry-level needs of hobbyists to the advanced needs of amateurs. People are building rockets equipped with downlink video, or onboard video cameras. Flight computers are available from many manufacturers, utilizing things like 12 bit processors, accelerometers and barometric sensors, GPS, flight data recording capabilities, expansion boards and more.

This growing sophistication of hobby rocketry presents new challenges. Traveling in excess of Mach is commonplace. Building rockets using advanced techniques is important, like using carbon fiber or Kevlar for airframes, graphite plates for fins to eliminate flutter, proper aerodynamic modeling to insure the rocket will fly in a stable manner and so forth.

One area of rocketry that has interested me over the years is that of recovery. There had to be a better way to separate a rocket than lighting some nasty black powder. I was tired of ruining expensive parachutes, burnt recovery lines, Nomex stuffed everywhere, powder residue everywhere and the danger of the powder going off.
In the Black Rock desert where we launch each year, there has been an increase in the number of rockets that were not recovered when flown over 20,000 ft. For several years, discussions centered on why this was occurring. Every rocket flown high seemed to fail in recovery and crash.

People said to use more black powder charges to offset the lack of air. People said that there was no oxygen up there. People said it was computer failures. Every theory was wrong.

So, there was a need for a system that eliminated black powder charges that could be used in all rockets, low flying and high flying. So, Steve Preston, Henry Reygoza Rob Briody and myself decided to figure out why virtually all rockets launched to high altitudes crashed. If that was solved, a product could be made that would not only benefit rockets flying to lower altitudes, but it could be used in the high flying rockets where there was currently no method to address the high altitude problem.

We designed and built a vacuum chamber to simulate altitudes experienced in rocketry. The results were astonishing.

Each experiment over 20,000 ft showed a drop-off of burn in all pyrogens tested, not just black powder but smokeless powders as well. Rob Briody made some nitrocellulose based and potassium based pyrogens that produced the same results.

Even a Daveyfire electric match wouldn’t burn over 55,000 ft. Only the contact and the dipped pyrogen touching the contact burnt. The rest of the pyrogen on the tip remained!
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Professor Twiggs of Stanford recommended that I contact NASA to ask them why this might be happening. I received a call back explaining to me that things cannot burn in a vacuum due to the lack of air molecules needed for transferring the heat energy to the next molecule. With a lack of air as a heat transfer medium, there is no way to continue the combustion and maintain the needed ignition temperature.

Another factor is that of expanding gasses. When a gas expands it cools. So, when a pyrogen burns, the gasses created expand and cool. FAST. This cooling also self extinguishes the burn since the ignition temp of the pyrogen is not maintained and no spark or catalyst is still present. And, the expanding gasses pull away from the surface of the burn.

So, after many design choices, the current CD3 unit evolved. It has been tested in a vacuum chamber where a total vacuum was held for 1/2 hour and worked perfect.

It’s also designed to mount in to as many flight configurations as possible right out of the box. CO2 cartridge sizes from 12 gram to 38 gram are used in the CD3 system. For the larger rockets, the “El Grande” unit is now available. It uses either 92 gram or 120-gram cartridges.

The parts are manufactured in Santa Clara, California by Visger manufacturing, a leader in manufacturing and machining in Silicon Valley at their multi-million dollar facility. You will love using this product in your next rocket.

About Monster Motor Systems
In 2005, we introduced rocket motor hardware. Our rocket motor hardware, in the 29 millimeter sizes and above, features hard anodizing on the rear closures and on forward closures on the 29,38 and 54 millimeter sizes. This hard anodizing (commonly called Type 111 anodizing) is a far superior coating than reqular sulfuric anodizing (commonly called type 11 anodizing). During sulfuric anodizing, no metallics are involved other than aluminum. Unlike Type 11 electro-deposited metallic plating, where plating builds up by depositing on a base metal, an anodic Type 111 coating penetrates and grows on the base metal by converting aluminum to aluminum oxide. Hard coating enhances electrical insulating properties and makes the substrate twice as hard as stainless steel.. The ratio of growth/penetration for anodic coatings is typically 50/50, or in other words, the thickness of the hard anodized is a combined thickness of penetration thickness and build-up thickness. Some features of Hard anodizing are below:

• Unmatched wear properties
• Coatings wear as well as or better than hardened steels (HRC values of 70) as judged by Suga and Taber Wear tests.
• Can achieve salt spray resistance in excess of 1000 hours.
• Good for salvage work of parts with critical dimensional specifications.
• Can achieve very tight tolerances.
• High dielectric strength to 2000VDC.
• Heat dissipation
• Excellent abrasion resistance

A comment from an anodizing company president
The toughest is hard anodizing. "I get a charge out of telling a group of engineers that I can make the surface of aluminum 30-35 points from being as hard as a diamond. You can't cut it with a file. It is about 65-70 Rockwell hard. That is one of the reasons it is used in so many critical applications."

This is the reason Rouse-Tech chose to feature hard anodizing on these parts.
We also know that many rocketeers forget to clean their motors in a timely manner. The hard anodizing will give extra protection to those neglected parts! The forward and aft closures experience the worst a rocket motor has to offer. There are few environments more rude, than the environment a rocket motor's forward and rear closure will experience during a burn.

Our product line includes every piece of hardware needed for every Aero-Tech RMS (tm) motor. We start with our 18 millimeter hardware set and finish off with the 98 millimeter hardware. And, its all in stock ready for your launch.