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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: 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.
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