The Stanford Student Space Initiative (SSI) rocket team took first place in the 30k ft COTS division at the 2017 IREC (Intercollegiate Rocket Engineering Competition), held in New Mexico this past June. You can read more about the competition here:
http://www.soundingrocket.org/2017-irec.html.

As some of you may remember from previous newsletters, Sherline became a proud sponsor of the Stanford SSI team. They have been using a Sherline 2000-CNC mill to make parts for their rockets. Teams within the SSI include rockets, balloons, satellites, policy, operations, and biology.

According to rocket team member, John Lars Dean, "We've used the mill to cut numerous Delrin parts, mostly for our rocket team's Intercollegiate Rocketry Engineering Competition project. We've mainly used the mill in the manual mode." He added that the CNC has not been fully integrated at this time.

John went onto say, "I think the best part to highlight would be a Delrin bulkhead manufactured to be a load bearing element on the recovery path in the avionics bay on our rocket for the IREC competition. The part that was made was for the forward bulkhead of our Avionics assembly." (Click on image for a larger view.)

John explained that this part was used to seal off the avionics unit from the forward end of the rocket. It sits inside of a 4" diameter carbon fiber airframe. It is a key structural element, as it transmits the shock force from when the nosecone is ejected off of the rocket, (held on) from a U-bolt that is bolted to it to fiberglass rods that run down the length of the avionics bay. It also is used for mounting connection points for wires of electric matches that trigger the separation of sections of the rocket.

To see more about the Stanford team's experience please visit their blog site at https://stanfordssi.org/blog/rockets-1st-place-in-category-at-irec.

We look forward to seeing more from the Stanford SSI crew.