Hello all, I'm new here. Just found the site through some messages from some JLN Labs yahoo messages I get. Looks great!
It's been ahwile since I've played around with lifters, but my mind always seems to wander back.
So, my question is this: a conventional configuration is a wire emmitter and a foil collector with a dielectric air gap... would it be essentially the same if one were to take a sheet of paper and paint (with nickel print) an "emitter line" on one edge of the paper, leave a gap, then coat a wider section with more conductive paint to form a collector? Of course, it may be too heavy to lift itself... but I just had an idea of taking honeycomb sheet, and painting just the top edge with a bit of nickel print, then dipping the opposite side into nickel print a bit deeper, essentially to produce a lifter with a hige number of closely spaced cells quickely and cheaply. This could also be done with a bundle of paper or plastic straws.
www.mcmaster.com sells phenolic resin impregnated kraft paper honeycomb core (product # 9412K64) up to 2" deep with 1" cells for less than $10 a square foot. Might be a good for horizontal thrust tests.
Hi,
You should read the PDF linked from this site: http://gltrs.grc.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/GLTRS/browse.pl?2004/CR-2004-213312.html
Electrostatic lifters are fun to experiment with, but there efficiency is very low. To make this
worse they don't work outside an atmosphere!
Take care.
Ahhh... thanks for the link!