This was the third iteration of the Carby Rocket built in AeroNU to test supersonic airframes using a fairly small diameter rocket. This rocket is a minimum diameter, 98mm design utilizing a clamping aluminum machined fin can, and an innovative SLS 3d printed upper airframe with a transparent section in the middle.
In order to facilitate the placement of a transparent acrylic tube in line with the airframe, there were aluminum tubes which ran from the mid section of the nosecone to the coupler section to provide rigidity. Each bulkhead had built in flexture clamps using screws which clamped down on the tube to prevent it from sliding.
The fin can was machined by me from a solid aluminum pipe, 4″ ID, 5″ OD, using a rotary indexer on a manual mill. I designed and made a custom fixture to clamp the pipe to a 5C collet and provide a tailstock to increase rigidity.
The rocket had one successful transsonic flight in St Albans, Vermont, after which we took it to Mojave, California to fly to Mach 2.0, where it unfortunately failed castastophically, either due to aerodynamic resonance of the fin can, or a castrophic failure of the upper airframe.
https://grabcad.com/library/carby-v3-the-starship-enterprise-high-power-rocket-1
