Get NASA Involved in 3D Printing
James Husum writes:
NASA is currently taking ideas from the public for about the next week or so at http://opennasa.ideascale.com. People can submit their ideas and vote on the ideas of others.
I submitted an idea for NASA to get involved with the desktop manufacturing / 3d printing movement. It can be seen here.
Desktop manufacturing and 3D printers are beginning to emerge as a growing industry. See RepRap – http://www.reprap.org/ and Cupcake CNC – http://www.makerbot.com/ for two examples. The technology allows you to design a model and have it manufactured in a device about the size of a large inkjet / laser printer. Instead of ink it extrudes plastic onto a platform. By layering the plastic objects can be created.
NASA could work with the desktop manufacturing community to design models for use in 3D printers. There are any number of items that could be modeled – rockets, satellites, the Shuttles, the International Space Station. The designs could be released into the public domain for anyone to use.
NASA engineers could also look into helping to develop the technology behind the 3D printers to make them better.
Jack
March 10th, 2010 at 10:42 am #
Desktop manufacturing is just one of the many possibilities of 3D printing in Space Exploration. Another idea was proposed to be entered into NASA’s centennial challenges. The details of the challenge proposed are:
Title of Challenge: Automated Assembly Challenge
What is the objective of the prize challenge? Develop a robotic system that can fully assemble a duplicate of itself from supplied components, download a copy of its programming to the duplicate and activate the duplicate. The robotic system must also be able to assemble other items that would be useful from an in-situ resource utilization standpoint, from supplied components.
What milestone or performance measurement would determine the winner? Two milestones must be achieved. First, within two hours, the device must assemble at least one copy of itself from the developer supplied components, and activate it. Second, it and at least one of its copies must assemble and activate a useful machine such as a small grader. The resultant machine must be complete and functional. The fastest assembly and activation of the machine wins.
What is a suitable cash prize amount or non-monetary reward for the winner? $500,000 to $1,000,000
What is the format for the challenge? A format could be a build off between teams at a given location. The teams would supply their own components for the robot copies. The prize organization will supply the components for the small grader. The parts list and schematics for the grader will be made available to the teams beforehand.
The idea can be found at:
http://www.nasa.gov/offices/ipp/innovation_incubator/centennial_challenges/future/ideas.html
While it hasn’t been announced as a competition, it shows that there is a great need for 3D printing beyond prototyping to making fully functional devices ready to use in space.
rodbotic
March 10th, 2010 at 12:09 pm #
I doubt that nasa will anytime look into 3d printing until we can print in materials that are not plastic.
most plastic doesn’t fair well in the sun. now imagine the Radiation levels in space!
aluminium laser sintering I beleive would be the only feasible method. Aluminium doesn’t get that active(or that long of a halflife) in an active environment.
I wonder if a ceramic printer would work with moondust?
Vincent
March 10th, 2010 at 3:58 pm #
I work as a contractor for NASA in a program called HUNCH (High Schools United with NASA to Create Hardware). The program has many schools in many different disciplines. For cad classes we give the class certain drawings and a 3d printer. They recreate the drawings in 3d and we use them in our 1 for 1 scale mock-up of the U.S. module on station. Lots of the things in our lab are created by high schools students. Not all of it is made out of plastic but some is.
Joris
March 11th, 2010 at 12:50 am #
NASA is already involved in 3d printing in a big way. They are doing research into Ebm, electron beam melting http://www.popsci.com/military-aviation-amp-space/article/2009-09/iss-could-get-its-own-electron-beam-fabrication-3d-printer
they actually want to use them on board space stations and also to turn the lunar surface into buildings. So perhaps the idea for the project could be hooked into that?
FreePLRMRR Downloads
March 11th, 2010 at 2:33 am #
[...] Get NASA Involved in 3D Printing – MakerBot Industries [...]
Labrat
March 12th, 2010 at 6:17 pm #
Funny that you bring this up… look what just popped up (found it Via Digg.com):
http://www.fastcompany.com/1579263/3-d-printing-whole-buildings-in-stonein-space-this-printer-rocks
Something that can 3D print stuff the size of furnature at the moment…
It makes it out of “Rock” and the guy considers this as a viable method of
construction of structures on the moon.
Ryan H
March 13th, 2010 at 11:37 am #
Actually, I can say that NASA is already interested in 3D printing, at least to a certain extent. I personally spent a year working for the Canadian Space Agency in Montreal designing 3D scale models that were printed out on a commercial 3D printer (I think it was a Dimension) for use in training and education. For example, the CSA handles a lot of the training for ISS missions because they built all the robotics that are used to assemble everything.
They released some images of the 1:50 scale ISS that is used in the training facility on their site. They also use (working) printed 1:1 replicas of many of the tools and various scale models of other features like the Dextre robot. And I know that after using the models at the CSA NASA has expressed some interest in similar models.
ashraf
March 27th, 2010 at 3:20 pm #
Hi
I am Ashraf
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3d modeling is my interest and hobby
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so
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Aِِِِِshraf ashraf349202@yahoo.com