Why the National Research Council is wrong about it.
Given all its myopia and conservatism, does the NRC ever produce anything of value?
13 thoughts on “3-D Printing In Space”
Comments are closed.
Why the National Research Council is wrong about it.
Given all its myopia and conservatism, does the NRC ever produce anything of value?
Comments are closed.
You know I agree with myopia being in abundance but given a choice between a 3D printer and duct tape, I’ll take the duct tape.
human labor in space is very expensive
A human’s time is not all equal. We also have the concept of free time. I know I’d waste a lot of it with a 3D printer, some productive, but a lot of it not.
I see the value of a 3D printer. I want to get one myself.
no one ever claimed that 3D printing was a magic solution to every space operations and manufacturing problem. General Latiff is fighting a strawman.
Ah, dueling strawmen! Which does not negate the issue of overhype.
“but given a choice between a 3D printer and duct tape, I’ll take the duct tape.”
What about 3d printed duct tape?
3d printed duct tape?
All for it except they don’t make 3D printers that include fiber in the plastic or adhesives… but I like yer thinkin’ Wodun.
I absolutely agree that duct tape is essential. (It sure was essential on Apollo 13 and darn handy on several Shuttle missions).
The good news is it’s not an either-or choice. My hunch is that there’s plenty of room in the budget to take along a roll of duct tape even if you have a printer – with NASA’s procurement process, a roll of duct tape probably costs only a few hundred thousand dollars.
I’ve always considered 3d printing just another tool in the toolbox; very useful for some applications, but certainly not all applications.
3D printers require very carefully produced inputs manufactured on earth and launched from Earth. That’s a limit which some space enthusiasts tend to forget. You can’t put any asteroidal dust into a 3D printer to produce any spaceship spare part.
But a 3D printer on the ISS which is in regular shuttle contact with Earth, seems to be a very great idea.
“3D printers require very carefully produced inputs manufactured on earth and launched from Earth.”
Present 3d printers, certainly. The printers that help make a revolution in manufacturing spacecraft in Space will be designed to use materials found and given minimal processing at the tops of gravity wells. The current efforts are “proof of concept” experiments.
“You can’t put any asteroidal dust into a 3D printer to produce any spaceship spare part.”
No, but you *can* put the bits of native Nickel/Iron to be ground out of CC asteroids through the simple “Mond Process”, and distill the resulting Iron Pentacarbonyl from the Nickel Tetracarbonyl. You can use those to make metal powder quite capable of being used in printers that use either laser sintering or electron beam melting. In Space the hard vacuum will allow “cold spray” printing as well, driven by high accuracy electrostatics instead of gas pressure. Or, you can use truss forms described by CalTech, MIT and Lawrence Livermore Labs groups
http://www.jrgreer.caltech.edu/home.php
to provide the recyclable substrates for using carbonyl deposition to 3d print/additive manufacture metallic nanotrusses with the same strength as the solid metal and 2 orders of magnitude lower mass. It seems materials, once again, change behavior at dimensions where quantum mechanics affects properties.
These sorts of processing will indeed revolutionize what can be done in Space through far lower mass probes, and then in-vacuum spaceships, and habitats. These are only the first examples. The Carbon in CC Asteroids can be put through a Sabatier process to make methane, from which graphene can be deposited on nanotruss substrates. Then, add a layer of your favorite metal to make a composite with the graphene as reinforcement.
3d printing/additive manufacturing will change huge numbers of things in Space, as long as we don’t wait for Congress to fund it. Expect far more advanced work to be pushed from engineering and demoes at Bigelow’s inflatables than ISS will be allowed to produce.
Is there a simple ‘Aluminum Powder’ process?
Aluminum gets you a decent conductor and (should) allow reserving the iron for -needs-….
“Is there a simple ‘Aluminum Powder’ process?”
Several, …. Aluminum alloys can be powdered and used with laser sintering, with electron beam melting, and with “Cold Spray” techniques, though those are currently gas driven (often Argon). In the vacuum of Space you could substitute high accuracy electrostatic field acceleration of charged Aluminum particles for the acceleration by high pressure gas.
You can also do what MadeInSpace is doing with their plastic materials, and use extremely thin wire made from Aluminum Alloys.
Do remember that MadeInSpace is finding that in freefall printers that work well in 1G have to be modified to do the job. Certainly the standard concept of a gravity-contained powder bed in which to melt or sinter the desired shape needs drastic rethinking or replacement.
“Is there a simple ‘Aluminum Powder’ process?”
Hmmmm! I just realized you might have meant “Is there any simple process to get Aluminum powder from the Al2O8 available on many bodies of the inner solar system?”
Yes! The FFC Cambridge process can be made to work with many metal oxides, including Aluminum, in addition to the Titanium that is the current focus of Metalysis, the company holding the patents for this process.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FFC_Cambridge_process
This .jpg gives an idea of the really simple product flow, compared to other methods.
http://www.metalysis.com/images/process/process-flow-diagram.jpg
I was actually aware of several approaches for the chemical process side, and -not- aware of the powdering methods. 😉
But this method highlights the key bit. You don’t need 14 devices, what you need is one thing you -can- get, more power.
Do you happen to have links to thoughts on non-Terrestrial separation approaches? I keep thinking there’s an array that aren’t really applicable on Earth (basically because so many chemicals are cheap and available) that should be useful when you’re stuck with “just” electricity and a very small amount of pre-planned gear that -must- be reused.
And …
How does that process proceed if you have, say, Al(OH)3 or y-AlO(OH) or other ‘not -completely- oxides’ present?
I’ve recently seen liquid rocket engine injectors and pumps that had been 3D printed. The injectors (made by a foreign source which would astonish you) had mechanical properties that were 100% to 110% of cast billet strength (not as good as wrought materials, but very good). Chambers and nozzles are a comparative breeze. The foreign source can build a 25,000 pound thrust engine in three days by 3D printing.
This is either disinformation, to make us look stupid to our adversaries, or just a case of us actually being stupid.
It’s worth remembering that SpaceX’s super draco engines are printed. That kind of tech could be handy indeed for some applications (certain kinds of spare parts especially).