Aug 10, 2015 | By Simon
When considering some of the most memorable events that have happened since 3D printing has hit the mainstream, it’s hard to deny that the launch of a 3D printer into space in the Fall of 2014 has been one of the most memorable.
The printer, a Zero-G Printer from 3D printer manufacturer Made in Space, currently resides on the International Space Station and has already been used to produce a number of prototype parts including a wrench design that was famously emailed from the Made in Space office up to the International Space Station - proving that additive manufacturing in space with designs that were optimized on Earth is actually possible.
On Tuesday, August 11th, nearly a year after Made in Space saw their Zero-G 3D printer get launched into orbit and into the International Space Station, a group of Virginia Tech College of Engineering students are gearing up to see a 3D printer design of their own get launched into orbit from nearby Wallops Flight Facility, too.
The 3D printer experiment, which will fly aboard a 900-pound NASA two-stage Terrier-Improved Malemute suborbital sounding rocket, is a part of the national RockSat-X program which is aimed at putting university-led experiments into suborbital space. Although Made in Space was the first to launch a 3D printer into space, the experiment from Virginia Tech will be the first time that a 3D printer will be used on an unmanned rocket during flight; over the course of seven hours, the rocket will be launched, print the school’s logo using the 3D printer, and return back to Earth.
“We wanted to be the pioneers of that and get to be the first to tackle the problem,” said Virginia Tech RockSat-X team leader Sebastian Welsh, who is currently a senior in the school’s Computer Science program and is leading 20 others on the team.
“There’s a lot of practicality behind it … in the future, as 3-D printing develops, we’ll see a lot of benefits to it such as parts replication and repairs in space, so for example if a part in space breaks on a mission to Mars or the ISS, it takes a lot of time and money to get new parts up to the astronauts, if it’s even possible at all, but if there’s a means to manufacture the part on board the spacecraft it would make repairs a lot easier and potentially help save missions.”
According to Welsh, the custom-built 3D printer - which is assembled from mostly aluminum and cost $2,000 to build using student-manufactured parts and off the shelf components such as belts and springs - had to weigh less than 30 pounds, take up very little space and be able to survive through 20 to 40 times the normal force of gravity while reaching speeds of 3,800 miles per hour during the launch. During the launch, the rocket will spend three minutes in microgravity and the team has programmed the printer to use hot-melted plastic to print their school’s “VT” logo during this portion.
In order to track the conditions that the printer performs under in order to make necessary changes to a future printer design, the team has included an onboard computer that will record temperature, pressure, and acceleration data. Additionally, an HD camera will record the printer as it prints before it lands in the Atlantic Ocean within seven hours after its launch.
So far, the students have spent a year on the project under the direction of Kevin Shinpaugh, an adjunct faculty member with aerospace and ocean engineering who has worked on several RockSat projects in the past.
According to Shinpaugh, this is the first experiment that has come from students rather than the faculty and it also falls in line with the new initiative set by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) to have astronauts in space build satellites using “junk” parts from discarded satellites using 3D printed parts to fasten them together into new spacecraft.
“In some ways, it’s a crazy idea, but in many ways, it’s groundbreaking,” he added.
Posted in 3D Printing Applications
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