TREND
NASA confirms the project of building a Fab Lab in Space
NASA has just successfully completed the mission on Zero-Gravity 3D Printing experimentation. The project is part of a broader design that, thanks to the realisation of Fab Labs, will bring humans to Mars.
NASA, the US Space Agency, has just published in the scientific journal “The International Journal of Advanced Manufacturing Technology” a paper summarising the results of the mission begun in 2015, aimed at verifying the quality of the 3D printing process in zero-gravity conditions. (Here NASA’s paper)
Some simulations had in fact suggested that microgravity could have effects on the structural characteristics of parts produced with additive manufacturing technologies.
The experiments conducted have instead demonstrated the full effectiveness of the process, allowing the micro-defects detected in the simulated environment to be attributed to the particular choice of parameters set on the CAM systems used, rather than to the external environmental conditions.
The mission was particularly important in light of the general plan of the NASA project called Wider In-Space Manufacturing (ISM).
Part of the ISM project concerns the realisation of FabLabs on board space bases and spaceships with the aim of supporting and solving the logistical problems connected with the supply of components and spare parts.
A FabLab is a digital fabrication facility, based on numerical-control fabrication technologies — both conventional, i.e. subtractive, and additive (3D Printing) — capable of manufacturing on-demand and on a small scale any kind of artefact.
The use of FabLab-typical technologies in the Aerospace sector is not new, and for some years now the use of new digital fabrication has been a reality that has allowed the production costs of components for which large-scale serial production is not required to be reduced — think of the mechanical components on a satellite made in two or three specimens (prototype, the element installed on board the satellite, possible spare to be used before launch) — or to reduce the costs connected with the logistics of airlines’ spare-parts warehouses.
In the latter case, to guarantee the availability of spare parts for aircraft at airport hubs distributed all over the world, it is necessary to bear the rental and distribution costs for warehouses with several thousand components that individually might never be requested.
Replacing warehouses with small digital on-demand manufacturing centres capable of producing any component on request allows airlines to achieve significant savings.
The logistics problem exists even more dramatically in long-haul space-exploration missions, where the need for components and spare parts goes beyond the simple eventuality of a failure.
For this reason, the realisation and experimentation of FabLab facilities starting from the next lunar exploration mission is considered an important project to be completed in order to guarantee the feasibility of the future conquest of Mars.
The success of the experimentation of zero-gravity 3D printing technology is a first step towards this scenario.
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