Re: [ERPS] General liquids discussion on erps-list

[Bruno Berger]

Ok, I try...

No, SPL is not the Swiss Space agency. We even don't get a cent from the government for funding yet. We are just a small experimental group of (mostly) engineers beeing fond of loud and fast vehicles. SPL is still a non-for-profit organization. We have a main sponsor, ARO TECHNOLOGIES, I would say more than 90% comes from ARO. The rest is financed out of our private pockets. This is all mentioned on our website by the way...

CAD:
Yes we use CAD. Several system are involved. Personally I work with Solid Edge. Work at the University of applied science Basel is usaly done on I-DEAS or Autocad. FEM and CAM also with I-DEAS. For the current work no CAM was involved, the pieces were to simple for that and a skilled machinist has programmed the CNC machine much faster by hand. This changes of course if you mill some free-form surfaces or other complex parts.

Shop:
small an big lathes (swing 100-400mm), conventional mills and 3, 4 and 5 axes CNC mills. welding: "sparkler candle" :-), MIG, TIG, Plasma and microplasma. All kinds of sheet metal forming etc etc. We have acces to the shops of ARO and FHBB with lots more than the usual maschine tools.

Drawings:
hm, there are lots of drawings. We have not decided if we will publish them or not. This issue has already been discussed here. Maybe for people we really know *very* well. I talked once with people from the Californian State University and their Calvein project. They said in a roundabout way that they feel uncomfortable giving away any infos about their research (maybe because TRW is involved ?). If even universities with their public projects are not allowed to publish results, so why should we do? ERPS has also such a policy about that. But we have to discuss that in our group...

Bruno

--
Bruno Berger
Swiss Propulsion Laboratory
E-Mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
WWW: http://www.spl.ch
HAM: HB9RSU

Alex Fraser wrote:
> Now that everyone has decided (I think) that they may comment on
> the Swiss
>
> engine, does anyone have any comments on the test?
> Besides my original comment on how pretty their machining is
>
> and how nice it didn't warp, I must ask a non technical question.
> How do you manage
> to get so much beautiful equipment? In this country we have NASA
> and we
> have ERPS, the former being a little better funded ;-). Is your group
> equivalent to a Swiss NASA?
>
> Now for some technical questions.
> Do you guys use CAD? Which package? Do you use 3D? For CAD
> CAM how many
> steps between drawing and part? Are there any drawings available?
> Could you describe your shops capabilities? Lathes, mills,
> welding and
> so on.

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