How it works?
How it works?
“Building the first full-scale, copper rocket part with additive manufacturing is a milestone for aerospace 3-D printing,” said Steve Jurczyk, associate administrator for the Space Technology Mission Directorate at NASA Headquarters in Washington. “Additive manufacturing is one of many technologies we are embracing to help us continue our journey to Mars and even sustain explorers living on the Red Planet.”
Numerous complex parts made of many different materials are assembled to make engines that provide the thrust that powers rockets. Additive manufacturing has the potential to reduce the time and cost of making rocket parts like the copper liner found in rocket combustion chambers where super-cold propellants are mixed and heated to the extreme temperatures needed to send rockets to space.
A selective laser melting machine in Marshall’s Materials and Processing Laboratory fused 8,255 layers of copper powder to make the chamber in 10 days and 18 hours. Before making the liner, materials engineers built several other test parts, characterized the material and created a process for additive manufacturing with copper.
“On the inside of the paper-edge-thin copper liner wall, temperatures soar to over 5,000 degrees Fahrenheit, and we have to keep it from melting by recirculating gases cooled to less than 100 degrees above absolute zero on the other side of the wall,” said Chris Singer, director of the Engineering Directorate at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, where the copper rocket engine liner was manufactured. “To circulate the gas, the combustion chamber liner has more than 200 intricate channels built between the inner and outer liner wall. Making these tiny passages with complex internal geometries challenged our additive manufacturing team.”Source and more information:
“Copper is extremely good at conducting heat,” explained Zach Jones, the materials engineer who led the manufacturing at Marshall. “That’s why copper is an ideal material for lining an engine combustion chamber and for other parts as well, but this property makes the additive manufacturing of copper challenging because the laser has difficulty continuously melting the copper powder.”
Engineers from Institute 41 (part of the China Aerospace Science and industry Corporation) have already successfully tested an engine ignition device that has been created using 3D printing technology.
This is reportedly the first time Chinese engineers tested a 3D printed rocket component, but it seems to be very suitable for the job. Shell structures typically used for the ignition components in rocket engines are very difficult to design and produce, and are very costly and time-consuming to create. Engineers felt themselves bottlenecked, so a team from the ignition technology research laboratory of Institute 41 began incorporating 3D printing into their R&D process.
In collaboration with local manufacturers of 3D printing equipment, these engineers eventually and successfully 3D printed the first set of shells for ignition devices. To ensure these shells met all design requirements, researchers produced hundreds of 3D printed test samples, which were submitted to various extensive testing sequences.
"Digital Future" Shanghai Summer Workshop 2014
Instructor: YU Lei (Tsinghua) / Philip. F. YUAN(Tongji) / Panagiotis Michalatos(GSD)
Collaborator: SHI Ji / LIU Xun / LUO Ruihua / CUI Yuqi
The project, Robotic 6-Axis 3D Printing, is a highly-integrated installation combining robotic system, 3D printing technique and interactive interface. It aims to provide the designer a digital method to eliminate the line between "Designing" and "Fabricating". In this case, architects provides more than just drawings and construction notes, however, they are capable of fabricating their work quickly and precisely by themselves
Most of today's researches and applications of robotic fabrication are limited to replicating human labor and raising efficiency of manufacturing. However, in the project of Robotic 6-Axis 3D Printing, we developed a fabrication strategy learning and emulating the law of nature (referring to Chinese philosophy "师法自然 ").
By studying the material and structure performance of 3D form in nature, we figured out a way to incorporate biomimetic fabrication strategy into 3D printing process. And by designing the special robotic-end effector (Tooling) and utilizing the great flexibility and accuracy of KUKA robot system, the biomimetic fabricating process has been fully realized.
The whole process embodied the concept of "Digital Craftsmanship", which emphasis the personality of designer and allows them to closely integrated "Designing" and "Fabricating".Here is video of the robotic craftsman in action:
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| Five filament types of different colors go in the nozzle, what would happen when different filament materials would be mixed? |
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| Forcebook UltraPrint 3D printer by HG Spot aka. Myriwell 3d printer |
It's not "similar" to the Chinese printer. It is the very same Chinese printer. But for 120 Euro more. This is hardly newsworthy, and being from Croatia I strongly resent this being published in the context of "first Croatian printer" there's nothing first nor Croatian about this. Just a company reselling Chinese stuff at a higher price, trying to rip off people with a crappy printer while the hype is still on.This is a great summary of the whole situation.
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| 3d printing machine used for producing full sized houses in China |
This one turned out to be a nice surprise because I was not expecting this make and model because I had ordered one of the older 3Doodler clones. Nonetheless, this pen doesn't need to pause frequently to regain working temperature (like the 3Doodler does), and it feeds filament very well. It uses 1.75mm diameter ABS filament that has become the standard for fused deposition modeling 3D printing. The only issue we've seen so far is that it is difficult to print in the air as the 3Doodler can.You can buy it here:
A group of 3D printed houses, 200 m2 each, recently appears in Shanghai, China. These building were created entirely out of concrete using a gigantic 3D printer, and each costs only 30,000 RMB ($4,800).
The company behind these 3D printed building, Shanghai WinSun Decoration Design Engineering Co, said it has for years been working on developing the system and its materials. The company owns 77 national patents of construction materials, such as glass fiber reinforced gypsum and special glass fiber reinforced cement.
While Hobbyist models of 3D printers are currently available for only a few hundred dollars and lets users feed plastics and polymers into a machine, the company takes this technology to a bigger level. Using concrete, instead of plastic, WinSun wants to revolutionize the way homes and other structures are built.
WinSun's 150(L) x 10(W) x 6.6(H) m gigantic 3D printer is capable of printing entire building within hours. The 'ink' it used is based on high-grade cement and glass fiber. Like traditional 3D printers, the system carefully spills out those materials layer by layer, consistently building upwar
In addition, it is very impressive that the printing material is recycled construction waste, industrial waste and tailings.
WinSun plans to build 100 recycling factories in the country, one in every 300km, to collect and transform the waste into materials for 3D printing through special handling, processing and separation technology. "There will not be any waste from the construction of new buildings." said WinSun CEO Ma YiHe. WinSun expects 3D printing will save construction companies up to 50% on the cost.
The GRID II is a third generation printer from mbot3D. This sturdy metal frame 3d printer has one of the biggest build sizes on the market for desktop 3D Printers, 260x230x200mm. It is available in single head or dual head configuration.
The new printer features an automatic build plate calibration system that guides the user through the setup and then at every print probes the surface and uses the calibrated distance.
The printer also features a glass build plate , and a magnetic build plate holder making it a breeze to remove your build plate to remove your prints, which ensures your build plate calibration is kept in top condition.
The mbot3D GRID II also feature single or dual print fans to make sure your PLA prints are perfect every time!
The printer is bundled with a SD card, and an exclusive tool box with the basic tools need for maintenance of the printer.
