How to 3d print on the Moon?

I'm a strong supporter for space colonization (even if it sounds ridiculous now). 3d printing will certainly be one of the key technologies that will enable us to go there.

Currently there is a small race by several private companies. from start-up to large corporations, to get a foothold in the space by developing tech solutions. Since the Moon is one of the main targets, 3d printing with lunar dust and regolith will be solutions for building Lunar bases or large surface antennae dishes. It will be done by using small robotic 3d printing rovers and some type of laser or microwave sintering of Moon surface material.

If you want to  learn much more, here is an excellent and very educational presentation by Karsten Becker from Part Time Scientists. They are a team that is in Goggle Lunar XPrize competition to enable affordable access to space.


Video of the presentation:





PTScientists have a partnership with Audi for their Moon rover technology.

Here is a video with more details of the rover and story behind it. They use a lot of 3d printing with aluminum and titanium to get the properties they need. Wheels are critical for the rover movement so the pattern is specially designed.




BTW: if you are interested in Moon colonization and SF you should read Luna: New Moon by Ian Mcdonald. It is a great space opera that has elements of Dune and Game of Thrones, but is set on the Moon.

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Making Machines that Make talk by Nadya Peek

Must-watch video if you are interested into DIY, desktop manufacturing machines, hacking, making and generally awesome stuff!

Nadya Peek speaks about the process and basics of making machines that make, technology, digital fabrication economics, MIT modern high-end CNC machines and their limitations, how g-code is very stupid  and how biologists buy expensive machines that are easy and cheap to DIY ...
She also talks and shows many interesting machines that you can make yourself like liquid transfer and auto pipetting machines...



From video description:

Making a new control system for a machine is often a slow and tedious task. Maybe you already have a 3 axis stage, and you already know how to move it around. But what if you want to add a camera and use it for position feedback? You'd have to redesign the whole hardware layer.

I'll talk about some ways I've built modularity into control systems for machines so that you can quickly iterate on different kinds of machine systems without getting stuck in hardware land forever. This includes connecting synchronized nodes across a network and importing legacy nodes for things like, say, an old pressure box you found in the trash and has rs232 in.

Down with gcode! Long live machine control.

You can see her PopFab factory in a briefcase here:

http://diy3dprinting.blogspot.com/2012/07/popfab-factory-in-briefcase.html

Here is the post about MTM Multifab and Fab-in-a-Box:

http://diy3dprinting.blogspot.com/2014/01/mtm-multifab-multitool-desktop.html

Nadya Peeks home page:

http://infosyncratic.nl/

I found one of her presentations which loosely follows the theme of the talk in PDF format:

http://cba.mit.edu/events/13.03.scifab/Peek.pdf

She also spoke about some high end CNC machines being monitored by gyroscope, sensors and GPS so they can not be moved without authorization to prevent them begin exported to blacklisted countries. Here you can see the perfect example of that crazy security policy: http://boingboing.net/2014/01/06/high-end-cnc-machines-cant-b.html


The talk was part of 30th Chaos Communication Congress (30c3) by the Chaos Computer Club (CCC) at Congress Centrum Hamburg (CCH)

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