Custom Rocket Nose Cone Generator

It all started with the Water Rocket Launcher, that got me excited about designing and building water rockets! If you haven't printed this yet, I cannot recommend it enough!

This is a custom nose cone generator. A few example nose cones have been provided, but feel free to customize the nose cone using the OpenSCAD script! I will note, you can modify in browser at Maker World.

Also, check out the custom rocket fin generator I made.

It will generate a nose cone based on one of a few different profiles. To learn more about some of the profiles, feel free to check out this Wiki page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nose_cone_design#

Your options currently are:  Sine Curve, Linear, Parabolic, Elliptical, (Tangent) Ogive, Haack, and Exponential. 

You can also hack the script and generate a bi-conic nose cone if you would like, just select Parabolic and set the sections parameter to 2. This will create a bi-conic. 

You can also hack the script and generate a bi-conic nose cone if you would like, just select Parabolic and set the sections parameter to 2. This will create a bi-conic. 

You can also adjust the inner diameter of the cone in order to attach it to different rockets. 110 mm is standard for 2 L bottles, while 85 mm works well for 1.25 L bottles. These are the bottles commonly found in the US. In my personal opinion, the 1.25 L bottles fly a little bit better at lower PSI. 

How does it work? The script will use the height of your desired nose cone and divide it into a number of sections. Then, it will calculate what the radius of the nose cone should be at each section, and smoothing it out at the end. This means the more sections you give it, the smoother your nose cone will be. But it will also take longer to generate.

** For the Haack and Ogive profiles, you will want to use a number of sections larger than the height of the cone. If you do not do this, the top of the cone will be very flat. (In the examples I provide, it is a 100 mm tall cone, with 200 sections.)

I hope you enjoy generating some nose cones and launching your rockets!

**** EDIT I have added the Elliptical option to the nose cone generator, tuned some of the profiles so they are actually the correct inner diameter they need to be, and added the option for a mounting ring. 

If you are a teacher and are interested in giving your students a short packet to help students organize their thoughts, check out this document! I hope you enjoy generating some nose cones and launching your rockets!