User:Kit.Heckman/ENES-100/Project 2/Design CDIO

Static Lifter
Building an Ionocraft that achieves thrust using by ion wind which is generated through the electrical Biefeld-Brown Effect.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/2/28/Simpleionocraft.gif/220px-Simpleionocraft.gif Image of a Triangular Static Lifter --Raj.Patel (discuss • contribs) 22:50, 14 April 2013 (UTC)

Conceive
The first problem is that the static lifter requires an obscene amount of energy. About 1 gram per watt. None of our power supplies would give us the power we need. The voltage must be continuous as well. A static lifter weighs about 4.1 grams, which would be about 4.1 watts. That isn't much, that's less than an AM/FM car cassette, but it requires at least 10,000 volts. Watts = (Volts)(amps), so if there is bound to be a tiny decimal of amperage, but extremely high volts. Getting this much voltage would require a special power source. Two ideas were taking the capacitor out of a CRT monitor (which could kill you)and building a home made Tesla coil (which can also kill you). As it turns out, almost any amount of electricity will kill you if it goes through your heart. Kit Heckman; 16:45 March 29th. A friend suggested using a voltage multiplier. This would let multiple relatively small amount of voltages to add together into a higher amount of voltage. After doing some research I found that there wasn't any easy way to obtain one, and prices varied so wildly that it wasn't clear that there would be any quality assurance. Eventually I obtained a flyback transformer, but it became obvious that it wouldn't suffice either. Ultimately, without a power source, our static lifter sadly remained grounded. Kit Heckman; 19:00 April 11th.

Design
To design the mainframe of a static lifter the first objective was to factor in the materials that would be used. Since the static lifter by nature is quite inefficient (unable to lift more then a few grams) it has to be made up of light but sturdy materials. The material used to build the skeleton of the lifter was balsa wood. This is due to the fact that it has the best strength to weight ratio, only 40 percent of balsa wood is solid substance the rest is empty space. It is the lightest wood that can be used without sacrificing structural integrity. The static lifter has a triangular design is composed of two congruent equilateral triangles that have a perimeter of 60 cm and an area of 173 cm that serve as it's bases. The two bases are connected vertically at the vertices by three 7.5 cm strips of balsa wood. Then at the end of the second base(the one on top) there are three 4.5 cm of balsa wood strips connected at it's vertices. Finally, there is a copper wire attached to the 4.4 cm balsa strips(legs) at the 2.5 cm mark. --Raj.Patel (discuss • contribs) 18:43, 13 April 2013 (UTC)

Tutorials
/Static Lifter Frame Tutorial/--Raj.Patel (discuss • contribs) 22:53, 11 April 2013 (UTC)