Building A Twin Ion Engine (TIE) Catamaran (ft. RcTestFlight)

oh that thing is cooking it's going look at that there's even a wake behind it this catamaran has zero moving Parts no sales and virtually no noise signature yet it's fully maneuverable and moves under its own power the power of 40 000 volts here's the deal the era of motorized boats changed the world forever with engines and propellers came the ability to travel independent of weather conditions while achieving velocities greater than wind alone can provide those are remarkable things that we take completely for granted but they do come at a cost here's the noise signature of a diesel ship [Music] gas boats and air boats lots of power but also lots of noise and that noise pollution can have detrimental effects on both Avian and marine life so I planned on designing a boat which used a different kind of propulsion one which might be less powerful but is totally silent ionic thrust with input from Daniel of RC test flight and armed with too many versions of my BSI 2 Thruster this catamaran offers A New Perspective it's entirely remote controlled completely digital and is stealthier than a comatose ninja in theory foreign has been known for well over 100 years but ionic thrusters are Cutting Edge Tech and if that's your thing I know you'll love the event that keysight Technologies is gearing up for let's take a look keysight World innovate is a massive three-day online event that takes place on June 20th where industry leaders experts and futurists will share their vision of the future state of Technology their topics are pretty epic including technology that either affects us today or will affect us tomorrow each day lasts two hours and includes two Keynotes from industry leaders as well as a panel discussion dates and times vary depending on location but it starts with the Americas on June 20th this year they have some really interesting topics like day two for example talks about how the history of auto racing is going to lead to better and safer algorithms for autonomous driving I'm really curious how that pans out so this entire event is free and I will leave a link in the description down below so you can go check it out for yourself [Music] okay so I've been curious about the idea of an ionic thrust boat for a really long time and since September of 2022 I've been working towards designing a modular ionic Thruster that's capable of propelling an airplane I started with my first BSI Thruster which was primitive but functional then designed the BSI Mark II which was a massive step forward it's got room for improvement but moves a serious amount of air and to better understand how ionic thrust works I recommend watching my first Thruster video which breaks down the science anyways one morning I woke up to a really interesting email a company called Navigator boats challenged me to push one of their boats using ionic thrust I'd likely want to start small but after some thought I realized there may be some serious advantages to this first of all Marine noise pollution is a real problem I used to work with biologists that studied the effects of diesel engines on the health of whales and cetaceans and their findings were not great for several decades a growing body of evidence indicates we're turning the ocean into a rock concert data indicates our ships have a continuous impact on marine life affecting foraging behaviors creating behavioral issues damaging hearing and even causing death my friend Jordan assists with Marine research and his team recently published their findings as well so I asked them for his two cents there are species such as dwarf spermales and striped dolphins that are extremely difficult to approach due to their sensitivity to the noise from our outboard engines sound pollution in the ocean can significantly disrupt the ways whales and dolphins Forge for food and communicate with each other identifying methods to minimize these anthropogenic noises even if only temporary while traversing through a critical habitat for example is a step in the right direction so I posed this question does ionic thrust have the potential to propel a boat effectively while solving this noise issue I sure as hell wanted to find out polling from previous experience I started by downsizing my BSI Mark II after some mild design changes and minor improvements I plugged the 3D files into a program called prusa slicer and scaled the Thruster down by 50 percent hitting print and the build had begun [Music] what up Alex [Music] [Music] okay so here's the original Mark II Thruster in all its glory and this guy well that's the habitized version to power these thrusters I chose to use stun gun modules I hate to admit it but they're kind of amazing feed them five volts and they give you forty thousand the thrusters have three sections each so I wired a high voltage module to each section [Music] it's important to note that when things are scaled down proportionately it doesn't guarantee that they'll work proportionately as well especially with high voltage high voltage is a tricky Tina so I fed the Thruster 5 volts and prayed to Odin what velocities are we looking at here okay 2.8 2.8 meters a second that'll do to better visualize the output I turned to an old friend dry ice the fog it crates is brilliant for showing airflow and damn did it deliver you can clearly see the focus stream of air from this Thruster it's it's just beautiful unfortunately the Thruster didn't like this humidity and started to self-destruct for a quick fix I grabbed some electrical tape and covered the exposed edges of the wire on the outside hoping it would work uh that didn't help much so I went back to the drawing board and made some crucial changes all with the goal of reducing or eliminating sparking between electrodes feeling optimistic I gave that sucker a print and waited five hours one change was the addition of two bolts which acted as wire tensioners and another was electrostatic shielding between electrodes on the outside of both the positive and the ground once this was squared away I assembled the new Thruster with high hopes really hope this works I started test low at 2 volts no sparks so this is only eight watts in and that gives me 1.5 meters a second I feel like that's actually pretty good then moved up to three volts keeping my fingers crossed 3 volts and 22 Watts oh 2.4 that's actually I'm feeling pretty optimistic about this next was 4 volts 4 volts and 38 Watts oh 2.8 meters a second and finally full power at 5 volts and this is kind of maxed out 45 Watts 3.1 all right that's an improvement that's one hell of a force field oh I love it it's like the uh upgraded model that doesn't self-destruct a couple things to note here um three meters per second is definitely enough to push this boat especially considering we have dual thrusters and then also considering each Thruster only pulls like 40 45 watts of power that makes Energy Management super simple with the functionality on the first one all sorted out I printed and assembled the second Thruster all right now we're looking at Twin ion engines ready to go onto a catamaran [Music] choosing the best shape of hole for this boat was going to be important because I'm dealing with less than an ounce of thrust ultimately I went with a multi-hole drawing inspiration from catamarans because they're really stable and Kick-Ass and to optimize the shape I reached out to my friend Daniel he runs the RC test flight Channel you might have seen his videos on RC boats and airplanes he's been doing it for well over a decade so we met up at my favorite place called molbax which is essentially a jungle that serves coffee that much air will pushed a efficient lightweight bow for sure okay cool I mean the question is how fast right it's not going to go fast no but it's gonna go are we trying to send it across the lake no which might be cool it would be super cool as it turns out we both use onshape to do our 3D modeling so we figured we'd take advantage of the collaborative feature it has the next day Daniel shot over a link to our collaborative file and I was a huge fan of the direction this boat was going in this is why I love onshape it's features like this that allow not only engineers and companies to work collaboratively but also makers like ourselves he got to work building the catamaran holes while I set my sights on building the body and the high voltage Electronics [Music] thank you [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] to kick off my build I took a trip to my local maker Supply plasma Plastics because what would this project be without acrylic [Music] hey thanks man [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] it's not finished but this is the general shape that the body of the catamaran is going to take there will be a Thruster on both sides and then this little section in here is going to be filled with electronics and this is kind of a splash guard so it's not complete but I did get a ring from Daniel and he's finished the holes of the catamaran I think since we went with the long narrow holes it's going to go out a pretty good clip even though it's just 17 grams of thrust each that's something else should be about 33 34 grams of thrust uh 17 grams per Thruster wowing Daniel with my incredible wiring job we assembled the Thruster high voltage modules and power supply in preparation for testing the RC components at his place at first we ran into issues with the RC system providing enough current but we found a way around that we weren't getting much thrust with just one of these little motor drivers so we just put two of them in parallel we've got air we also had a humidity problem in his basement eventually though we had the entire system working perfectly that's doing maybe two six to eight meters a second with everything in working order I got the catamaran holes back to my place just psyched out of my mind to get this together [Music] foreign [Music] this is the brain of the entire boat it's an RC receiver which regulates how much power goes through the motor driver Pairs and thus the power going into each thruster thank you [Music] at this point we've got a catamaran looks nothing like a normal one now I need to sink the boat with the remote and mix the RC channels in such a way that I have Full Throttle forward and left and right control this is more Daniel's department so I'm going to give him a ring hey hey hello good sir we wanted this to drive just like a normal boat or car and we settled on a great mix we nailed the mixing check this out so no thrust no thrust but that all changes with just a little bit of throttle three 3.1 meters a second and if we go the other way stop it give it throttle on the other one and we're looking at the same 3.1 meters a second so they're matched they're functional and for them to both be turned on at the same time and go forward up up on the throttle the boat's coming together nicely you know it floats and the RC component Works flawlessly we got left right forward control I'm super thrilled about all that and that means all that's left to do are field tests so tomorrow morning Daniel and I are going to a fountain in downtown Seattle I guess where people actually use RC boats all the time and we're going to see what they think of an ionic thrust catamaran maybe it'll just blow up I don't know [Music] turns out the fountain looked like mud so we didn't test there after all but we did make a few adorable friends whoa is that a Droid whoa whoa sick dude yeah that's our boat it's flying how's it going hey I'm nibbling my shoes they like my shoes for some reason oh oh God oh God Mother Goose leave me alone first they attacked with cuteness then they attacked our toes I guess they looked like worms but these fluffy little terrorists served as an important reminder of what our project was all about this is a man on a mission right there world's first ionic thrust powered boat the the colors actually turned out better than I thought they would it kind of did like I was like green and red are going to be disgusting but it kind of looks cool I know it's a little Christmassy I feel like I'm in Leavenworth you know oh great [Applause] my catamaran oh that thing is cooking it's going it's going look at that there's even a wake behind it that's incredible so fast humidity um learning has a huge huge impact on how all those ionic thrusters perform yeah forward and then right turning turning right oh yeah it's totally turning yeah I guess reverse would be nice I don't uh go too far away because then we're just gonna have to swim to get it well what I might do is go home and start you know hop on on shape and maybe debate redesigning the entire thrusters whoa dude did you just say onshape did you just say odd shape not work and since onshape allows us to do that like collaboration sharing thing I'll show you the new files through onshape and then you can bounce ideas back to me and we can decide what's best going forward so good little test of Rooney I'd say it works yeah just sparking is the only issue the maneuverability of this catamaran was really really unexpected and it lasted almost half an hour on a single charge I was really happy with it apart from having a little bit too much fun those initial tests taught us a lot you know those ionic thrusters can absolutely be used to control a boat and also they really hate humidity to confirm humidity was the issue I tested it in a really muggy swamp the next day with results that were pretty indicative come on oh I've made a fly swatter boat regardless ionic thrust absolutely has the potential to be a silent form of propulsion so for the time being this prototype boat is best suited for lower humidity environments and all things considered is a massive step in the right direction it shows that with just a few adjustments a totally silent boat may be on the horizons and maybe just maybe we can turn the dial down on the Rock concert we've turned the oceans into I'm really passionate about the ocean so I'm going to work towards a version two of this boat one which works quietly and efficiently regardless of humidity so if this project got you thinking consider subscribing and leaving your thoughts down below thank you very much for watching and You Stay classy

Channel: Plasma Channel

Views: 330,183

Keywords: “Water bending”, Water bending, controlling elements, Avatar, Plasma, physics, Science, Discovery, High Voltage, “High Voltage”, “Voltage multiplier”, Tesla Coil, Vandergraff Generator, Electrostatic, “static electricity”, Lightning, Electronics, Plasma globe, Plasma Channel, Jay, Plasma Nation, Van Der Graaff, Marx generator, high power, Ozone, Ionic wind, Corona, ocean, catamaran, thrust, whales, noise pollution, building, remote controlled

Id: 2RTGv-p-xxY

Length: 18min 39sec (1119 seconds)

Published: Fri Jun 09 2023