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from the spooky-action-at-a-distance dept.
Sarah LeTrent reports at CNN that NASA just "emailed" the design of a socket wrench to astronauts so that they could print it out in the orbit. The ratcheting socket wrench was the first "uplink tool" printed in space, according to Grant Lowery, marketing and communications manager for Made In Space, which built the printer in partnership with NASA. The tool was designed on the ground, "emailed" to the space station and then manufactured where it took four hours to print out the finished product. The space agency hopes to one day use the technology to make parts for broken equipment in space and long-term missions would benefit greatly from onboard manufacturing capabilities. "I remember when the tip broke off a tool during a mission," recalls NASA astronaut TJ Creamer, who flew aboard the space station during Expedition 22/23 from December 2009 to June 2010. "I had to wait for the next shuttle to come up to bring me a new one. Now, rather than wait for a resupply ship to bring me a new tool, in the future, I could just print it."
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday December 21 2014, @04:40PM
"a plastic socket is probably more durable than a Chinese pseudo-steel socket"
No, it's not.
Try your plastic socket on pretty much any firmly attached metal nut and see how long before you
have a plastic cylinder.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday December 21 2014, @04:56PM
Can you explain why my "stainless steel" cutlery that was made in China started to rust?
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday December 21 2014, @05:02PM
It's not plastic?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday December 21 2014, @05:34PM
I didn't know that Chinese plastic was capable of rusting.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday December 21 2014, @09:48PM
Can you explain why my "stainless steel" cutlery that was made in China started to rust?
Sure -- most likely it is the wrong alloy for the specific corrosive conditions, for example not enough Chrome and/or Nickel. Nice brief summary here, http://www.portlandbolt.com/faqs/18-8-304-and-316-stainless-steel/ [portlandbolt.com] Note--Chrome and Nickel cost more than Iron (by a lot!), so I'm guessing someone cheated at the steel mill.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday December 21 2014, @09:14PM
Anyone have experience with how the stronger-than-steel plastics hold up under these conditions?
-- gewg_
(Score: 2) by crutchy on Monday December 22 2014, @12:34AM
utensils are also being manufactured from lexan, which is the stuff used to make the helmets worn by astronauts on the moon
not sure if it's printable now, but might be possible in future
also, metal alloy parts are already being 3d printed
not hard to imagine eventually printing steel components since welding is conceptually very similar. the energy requirements might not be much more either given the huge amount of energy required to smelt/recycle steel at a mill using electric arc furnaces
(Score: 2) by etherscythe on Wednesday December 24 2014, @07:10PM
Polycarbonate material (Lexan among other trade names applies) is a thermoplastic substance, so in theory quite possibly so. Given how tough it is though, I'd think it would be quite difficult to clean up after. You'd also be destroying the main benefit of it, which is the inherent strength (you get something like 30% of regular injection-molded part strength out of your average Reprap) unless you did something a bit more... well, expensive. And then you're just another manufacturer, I guess. If you have particular custom in-house needs I suppose it might work out though.
"Fake News: anything reported outside of my own personally chosen echo chamber"
(Score: 2) by GreatAuntAnesthesia on Monday December 22 2014, @09:54AM
But if you can easily print a replacement (maybe using the broken old one, melted down and fed back into the printer, as raw materials) then why would you care if the thing is only good a for a few uses?
It would save a ton of space: For people who tinker and fix things all the time then it makes sense to keep a big collection of high quality metal tools in your man-shed. For those of us who only pull the toolbox out of the loft a few times a year, printable, recyclable tools would be a blessing.