I tossed together a box for the speed control for the rotary, and added plugs to the cabinet to plug every thing in nice and simple. Then it was time to test the rotary out.

Mixed results. For something slapped together in such a hurry out of things hanging around the shop, it works. That's the good news. The bad news is it gets too hot during a run. So more work needed there.

I got some smaller needles in the other day, and gave it a go with them These are 23G needles. Made a big difference! I'll have to do a bunch of runs to get the settings all down pat, but early results are certainly encouraging. Check out this photo:

It's hard to pick out, but inside the yellow lines is a long fiber being pulled. Keep in mind that the outside of that needle is .6mm, so you can see the fiber itself is pretty darn small. The best I've been able to catch under the microscope after a run with this setup comes in about .015 mm diameter.

I stuck a small screw on the plate during a run, and let it collect fibers for a few minutes. Of course I messed the fibers up with my fingers, but this is what it look like under the scope:

The head of that screw is 5 mm. It's the black part, of course. Check out the fiber diameter, and length. Some of the lengths, when I get everything dialed in just right, are stretching into 110-120 mm range. I haven't got a picture of one of those yet because they are so hard to see due to their small diameter that I seem to loose them between the machine and the scope. Lol.

So, where am I? I'm happy with the length and diameters I'm getting. Still need to work on collection methods and all that, but the main work is heading into hours testing out each of the four main variables and how they interact. Those are solution ratio, feed rate, high voltage level and distance between the plate and the emitter. I'm just going to have to slug it out and put in the time to run it in a organized and highly planned manner. I was planning to do that before now, but I wanted the rotary done first.

Taking all of this to MRRF2017 in a couple of days. See you there?