Construction of Full Cylinder, Dual Dielectric e-field Thruster 1 - Inner electrode endcaps
Construction - Inner electrode endcaps
I had to make the rounded ends for the inner electrode tube.
For this I decided to try making the ends out of plaster and painting
them with nickel paint. Note that one of the ends has the wire going
through it that leads to the power supply.
For the end with the wire, I needed to make sure that the
wire would keep good conducting contact with the brass tube so I made a
"tensioned spring".
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The spring and wire in place.
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The cardboard bucket for pouring the plaster into.
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Longer view.
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The plaster has been poured.
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The carved endcap.
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Another view.
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And another.
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This end was harder to do than the other end. The reason was that I no longer
had a tube with two ends open. Instead I had a tube with only one end open.
When I put the tube end down into the small bucket as shown above, the
air inside the tube has nowhere to go. As a result, the trapped air pressure
prevents much plaster from entering the tube. It is the plaster inside the
tube that is supposed to hold the endcap firmly to the tube. So two attempts
failed (the endcaps would just fall off) until I realized that this was the problem.
To solve it I first poured some plaster into the tube and then put the
tube into the bucket as in the above pictures. The end result is in the
picture below.
I painted the encaps with the same nickel paint as used for the outer electrode.
Endcap with wire.
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Other endcap.
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The finished inner electrode with endcaps and epoxy.
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