The new crowdfunded roughing pump finally arrived safe and sound! Time for unboxing! Really excited about this! Due to several roughing pump failures, I have been out of thruster testing for a half a year. The community came together with … Continued
The prototype PCBs for the first ever AIS open source electric propulsion learning kit are in! The remaining parts should be arriving in the next few days. Once I fully qualify and test the kit, I will hopefully be able … Continued
While I am still waiting on the new vacuum roughing pump to arrive for testing (yet again more UPS delays), I have been still pushing forward to prepare everything for the big ignition test. I went through the final preliminary … Continued
I am absolutely blown away and truly moved by the unbelievable support of the community, who stepped up to provide funding for me to continue open source electric propulsion development at Applied Ion Systems even without me asking for help … Continued
All of the design files for the first generation of AIS thrusters I have completed to date – AIS-uPPT1, AIS-gPPT1, AIS-gPPT2-1C, AIS-gPPT3-1C, and AIS-gPPT3-1C Integrated Propulsion Module, have finally officially been released under the CERN-OHL-S V2 Open Source Hardware License! … Continued
It has been a crazy and rocky past week with the testing and rebuild failures of my latest acquired Edwards E2M18 vacuum pump. Without this pump, and really no money for a new pump or professional rebuild, I didn’t think … Continued
Despite the massive vacuum equipment setbacks and failures, I am still looking to try to move forward with some developments. I finally finished and am pleased to present a look at the first ever AIS thruster learning kit! Vacuum is … Continued
Over the past few days I have been working hard at rebuilding the faulty Edwards E2M18 vacuum pump I got used from eBay. To summarize it, the rebuild was a complete failure. While everything went back together fine after cleaning … Continued
Despite major setbacks yesterday with the failed vacuum pump testing, I do have some good news and progress. The in-vacuum fueling station for the ILIS1 has been completed, and has passed testing. Here is a video of the full loading … Continued
I wish I had good news to post about this time around, as I have a lot of major updates, but this is more urgent. The Edwards E2M18 I just recently purchased from eBay is not working, and is essentially … Continued