We’re happy to say that National Instruments is joining our growing list of sponsors and supporters. Welcome to the team!

National Instruments is the industry leader in automated test equipment and virtual instrumentation software. They make software and hardware tools used by scientists and engineers all over the world to acquire and process experimental data and to automate industrial processes.

This year they’re kindly giving* us an exciting gadget called a myRIO. It’s essentially a small embedded computer running a flavour of real-time Linux, with a host of exciting features like:

• A dual-core ARM Cortex-A9 processor at 667MHz, which gives us a decent amount of processing power.
• A Xilinix Z-7010 FPGA – this chip can be reconfigured to carry out a complicated operation of your choice in a single clock tick. Using an FPGA would usually involve learning esoteric languages like VHDL, but the myRIO’s FPGA can instead be programmed using NI’s graphical programming tool LabVIEW.
• A total of 48 digital I/O lines and a total of 10 analog input lines – the latter can sampled at up to 500 kilosamples/second. While the 12-bit ADC doesn’t quite have the resolution of the ADCs found on dedicated DAQ boards, it won’t be a limiting factor in what we’re using it for this year.
• Wi-Fi connectivity: the option of one fewer cable to trip over!
• A button.

It’s a very powerful (but heavy – it’d be half the vehicle’s mass!) option for Hummingbird’s flight computer. Since it can handle both control and data acquisition, it’ll also be useful for test-firing the torch igniter: the test team can set everything up, leave the lab, and command it from a safe distance to begin a test-fire and save data to internal memory, all while relaying important information to us.

We’re looking forward to seeing what we can do with this new piece of hardware – and in the longer term, we look forward to continuing to work with National Instruments on exciting spaceflight-related projects!

---

*Strictly speaking it’s on loan for as long as we find it useful, but I don’t think we’re going to run out of uses for it any time soon

Good news: the Opportunity Fund is giving us some money to support this year’s projects.

Warwick University’s Opportunity Fund provides bursaries of up to £1000 to extracurricular student projects. It’s funded entirely by donations from Warwick alumni. We’re very grateful to the fund (and, by extension, to everyone who’s funded it) for supporting us!

We are proud to say we have gained an official sponsor, please welcome Innovate 2 Make Ltd (i2M) to the team!

From their website:

i2M was formed in 2012 and established a machine-independent Additive Manufacturing (AM) based manufacturing facility. They recognise the need to provide clear open access to this exciting new technology and have already helped a number of major manufacturing companies to adopt AM into their production processes. These initial projects have proven the acceptance readiness for AM technology.

AM offers a new approach to manufacturing complex structures in a wide range of materials (Aluminium, Titanium, Inconel and Stainless Steel, etc.), and the process works directly from the Computer Aided Design model (3D CAD). It orients the components and slices the CAD data into layers which are then drawn in the build chamber using a Ytterbium fibre laser onto a powder bed containing fine metallic particles (Powder). Each layer is “grown” together to produce the final component.

3D printing in metal has some big advantages over traditional machining methods for parts with complex shapes. You know, complex shapes like this:

The “old-fashioned” way of making a precision component like this could be called subtractive manufacturing – you start with a block of metal and cut away the parts you don’t need. For really complex shapes, it’s often impossible for the cutting tool to reach internal cavities like the inside of an injector, so the part has to be made out of smaller pieces joined together somehow. This takes longer to build, and is harder to do reliably! On the other hand, if you build up a part layer-by-layer using additive manufacturing, it’s possible to create the entire part in one go, since even intricate details like injectors can easily be “sliced” into layers and printed.

I2M are kind enough to print complex parts for us, in exchange for us supplying information for a case study (and of course they also get a cheeky bit of promotion)!

We hope the relationship is a fruitful one, and we look forward to working with them

We are a branch of the UKSEDS (UK Students for the Exploration and Development of Space)!

They are the UK’s national student space society, and help support students and enthusiasts across the country by running space projects, hosting conferences & workshops, and doing outreach to inspire and educate.

They’re also very keen to build links between different parts of the space community, and to promote space beyond that. They are the UK chapter of the global SEDS movement, and a registered charity (no. 1158580).

Their Mission:

• To improve the knowledge base, skill sets and hands-on experience levels of students in the UK with an active interest in space.
• To provide a forum through which students can become involved in the space community through government, industry, and academia, both nationally and internationally.
• To promote the exploration of space, and the research and development of space-related technologies.

They currently sponsor us by helping us out wherever they can, and they also organise the annual National Rocketry Championship (NRC).

Go check them out and let them know what a great job they’re doing!