
How We Email Hardware to Space - steven
https://medium.com/backchannel/how-we-email-hardware-to-space-7d46eed00c98
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spiritplumber
I'm at the Mars Desert Research Station in Utah. We finally got a 3d printed
approved for use, and we've been using it to do a few things. So far
customized finger splints, a hose for an EVA pack (these are only semi-
simulated; it's insanely cold here, and they provide the hot air to prevent
face insensitivity and helmet fogging), and a little gizmo I did that lets you
use a safety razor as a scalpel. If you have questions, I will try to give a
cogent answer but our bandwidth is very limited and we have a simulated speed
of light delay so I can't answer straight away!

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NicoJuicy
Are you using a commercial available 3D printer or something else?

If so, can you share the name of the 3D printer you have chosen and if
possible on what grounds (advantages - disadvantages)

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spiritplumber
We are using a Cubify thing because they donated it. The first thing we did
was remove the horrible inkjet-like cartridge protection thing they have, and
set it up for bulk filament.

For reliability, I must recommend the Solidoodle 3 -- mine kept operating
through BEING ON FIRE when I was testing the laser cutter attachment.

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malandrew
Why haven't there yet been any projects for milling in space with some sort of
vacuum-remelt process for reusing the milled off materials. 3D printing is
great and all, but it still doesn't come close to what you can achieve with
milling.

That said, this is awesome. I just think that there are pros and cons to both
and we shouldn't be focused only on 3D printing.

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pogden
Milling is great, but not very mass-efficient. Resisting the cutting forces
involved in milling anything harder than light foam, requires a lot more
structure than simply moving a deposition print head. Machinists use mass as a
shorthand to talk about a machine's rigidity, with anything less than half a
ton being basically a toy.

Remelting waste is possible, but this sort of high quality manufacturing is
really hard, even on earth with gravity to keep material in a mold and hardly
any mass or energy constraints. This, and the chip collection system add
additional mass, have to be developed way before being put into orbit, and
have to work extremely reliably. Even a tiny amount of swarf floating around
the interior of a spacecraft could be disastrous.

We aren't focusing only on 3d printing, we're focusing first on 3d printing,
because it can work today, with technology we have, on a low mass budget, and
without jeopardizing the primary objectives of whatever mission includes it.

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WalterBright
When I toured the Belfast cruiser in London, what stuck out to me (the
engineer nerd) was the machine shop. Crammed in a tiny space was a marvelously
complete shop, where there wasn't much a skilled machinist couldn't make on
the spot. This, of course, is critical for a warship out at sea that would
need to make repairs or improvise right now.

In a spacecraft, this is obviously even more critical that one be able to make
repair parts on the spot. The Apollo 13 crew was pretty lucky they were able
to make makeshift repairs to keep going without much of anything to work with.
One shouldn't rely on being so lucky again.

The Challenger disaster (discussed recently on HN) comes to mind. If the crew
knew about the damaged wing, and had some ability to make new parts on board,
they might have been able to rig a repair good enough to get them home.

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scrumper
I was lucky enough to get a guided tour of HMS Belfast from one of her old
officers a few years ago. I think that shop could make just about anything,
but there were a couple of things which if broken would have crippled the
ship. Some piece of steering gear was the main one, IIRC. Just too big to
fabricate on board, and not really replaceable without a drydock.

A minor correction: I think you meant Columbia. Challenger was destroyed by a
leaking seal in the solid rocket booster while still in the launch phase. Not
something fixable while in flight.

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WalterBright
Thanks for the correction.

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double0jimb0
Scratching head on what the long term goal of this experiment was... (more 3D
printing PR?)

Seems like using this manufacturing approach would be a very tough sell for
any real mission.

Only benefit of 3D printing at your destination is the ability to manufacture
something that was overlooked, so contingency planning. (yea, yea, someday
we'll mine the printable materials on site, right...)

For just about any other item that you know you need, it would be much more
weight-effective (the golden measure in launch considerations) to just build
the part here on earth, where you can maximize specific density and specific
strength using materials that 3D printing can't touch. Plus you aren't lugging
around a heavy 3D printer + raw materials.

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TaylorAlexander
The article points to the short term goal being just to learn how 3D printers
behave in space. They mention printing things in space and then sending them
to the ground for analysis.

Long term, I think the goal would be to do metal printing in addition to
plastic printing (most likely with separate machines).

3D printed plastic parts can do a lot - they aren't as weak as people make
them out to be.

The obvious advantages are that complex things can be made on site with zero
labor required (besides occasional assembly of things that can't be printed
assembled).

It can be hard to speculate on what a general purpose tool will be most used
for in the future, but I do think that there is something on-site printing
offers that delivery from earth does not. As we send spacecraft beyond low
earth orbit, sending from earth simply stops being an option.

Hell, from what I recall of the movie a 3D printer onboard Apollo 13 could
have salvaged the mission entirely. 3D printing isn't just about making things
you forgot, but replacing things or making new things. Maybe people get to
mars and realize there is an experiment they want to run that needs some
little assembly they could print.

I'm not able to predict what a 3D printer would be used for, but you can be
damn sure I'd want the ability to fabricate parts locally if I was on a multi-
year Mars mission. And that does seem to be our long term goal.

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kijin
"You wouldn't download a $physicalObject, would you?" has been an annoying
meme for quite some time.

Every year, that meme is becoming closer to reality. You can already download
small plastic objects. And I look forward to the day when I can torrent a
pirated Tesla to my garage :p

Imagine what the film _Apollo 13_ would have looked like with a fast 3D
printer on board. Instead of trying to shoehorn a square CO2 scrubber into a
round hole using all sorts of stuff that was never designed for the job,
Houston could have sent them a perfectly designed adapter.

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qwerta
> Imagine what the film Apollo 13

Yeah, they would run out of battery juice way before reentry burn :-)

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sedachv
For anyone confused about how you can print the ratcheting mechanism, I think
this wrench is probably the new toothless/springless design from Roller Clutch
Tools
([http://www.rollerclutchtools.net/](http://www.rollerclutchtools.net/)):
[http://3dprintingindustry.com/2013/08/20/this-
year-3d-printi...](http://3dprintingindustry.com/2013/08/20/this-
year-3d-printing-a-wrench-actually-means-something/)

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Smushman
I hope this does not come across as cynical.

As an engineer my first thought when I saw what it printed was how do you turn
a bolt with a plastic wrench without breaking the wrench?

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canadaj
You've already got some better replies, but I have always wondered about the
strength of 3D printed materials.

I think it's just amazing that we're at this point anyways. Regardless of how
good the tools are, we can print them in space.

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diydsp
We use some where I work. They are useful in niche applications, such as our
one-off research lab equipment. They wear out slowly. They work best where we
have 5 different common orifices for fluid that need to be merged into one.
When they wear out, we order new ones.

We pay a tech who knows CAD and a fab house rather than a machine shop. A
machine shop would probably cost a lot more. Although now that we have the
design down pat, we wouldn't waste as much money on prototypes.

Our design includes 2" diameter threaded ends and it holds pretty firmly
although the threads do wear out and tear off the tube with vibration and heat
changes.

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lostdog
How cool! Does anyone know what changes they had to make to get their 3D
printer to work in microgravity?

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aeturnum
I recall reading about plans to manufacture fuel on the surface of mars for a
return trip. I wonder if the goal now is to manufacture fuel and raw 3d
printing materials? Seems like it takes some of the pressure off the initial
trip loadout.

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pjmlp
Great! Now we just need replicators. :)

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grecy
I hadn't thought about it like that before, but 3D printers are very much the
first step of a replicator.

It would be nothing to throw some speech recognition into the loop - not that
you need to - and basically say "I want a 16mm wrench" or "I want a 16 oz cup"
and come back in 1 hour to find it exists.

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bagels
They essentially did have this, they told people on the ground that they
needed a wrench, and the people on the ground designed one for them to print.

