SAN JOSE, California USA — In a move to restore razor-thin profitability in some high power rocketry products, Tom Rouse of Rouse-Tech has announced that the CD3 C02 systems would no longer be available through individual dealers.  The product would continue to be available direct from the company.

It's no secret that the margins in hobby rocketry products are small, but certain conditions can eliminate those already small gains.  Citing a rise in machine shop productions costs which according to Rouse "cut the profit margin in half," dealers themselves were only ordering on an as-sold basis and not actually stocking the product.

The CD3 is a carbon dioxide recovery deployment mechanism for rocketry applications. The device is a linear pyrotechnic release mechanism for piercing stock, off-the-shelf CO2 cartridges and using the expanding gas to perform parachute deployment.  The cold gas takes the place of a .25 to 10 gram pyrotechnic charge and eliminates scorching and burning in recovery systems.

CD3, which stands for Carbon Dioxide Deployment Device, is the result of numerous observations at launch sites of failed high altitude flights. So very often these high fliers would return dramatically with their electric matches partially burned and pyrotechnic charge missing, but yet without parachute deployment.

A year of research using fixtures capable of simulating near-space vacuum, consultation with engineers and scientists, and hundreds of tests determined that current methods of deployment were lacking. The fact that e-matches and powder charges both needed to be within a contained system in order to work properly was well known to aerospace engineers but largely ignored by the hobby rocket community. The natural outgrowth of this experimentation was the utilization of this contained system to do work and open a CO2 cartridge which would provide the necessary deployment gasses.

Rouse-Tech stated they would continue to sell CO2 cartridges to dealers for those fliers who used their products at launches.  Other Rouse-Tech product distribution is not altered or affected.

Website: http://www.rouse-tech.com