ESA 3D Prints Moondust Bricks for Space Colony Construction

Space colonies will be built with 3d printers. We will never see bricklayers and construction workers in space suits.





Technology description:

Bricks have been 3D printed out of simulated moondust using concentrated sunlight. This ESA project took place at the DLR German Aerospace Center facility in Cologne, with a 3D printer table attached to a solar furnace, baking successive 0.1 mm layers of moondust at a temperature of 1000°C. A 20 x 10 x 3 cm brick for building can be completed in around five hours.

DLR Cologne’s solar furnace has two working setups: as a baseline, it uses 147 curved mirror facets to focus either actual sunlight into a high temperature beam, employed to melt together the grains of regolith. But this mode is weather dependent, so a solar simulator was subsequently employed as well – based on an array of xenon lamps more typically found in cinema projectors.

ESA project homepage:

http://www.esa.int/Our_Activities/Space_Engineering_Technology/Printing_bricks_from_moondust_using_the_Sun_s_heat

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Slovenian Makers 3D Printing and CNCing on Solar Power

IRNAS Institute is a Slovenian non-profit organization involved into DIY science projects, education and open source technology development.
They participate in many events and they demonstrated how additive and subtractive machines can be used powered by photovoltaic panels.


Here is their Troublemaker 3D printer in off-grid configuration:




Here is their GoodEnough Hybrid CNC making Aker planters on solar power:



Link to more extensive article and some other cool project by IRNAS:

http://irnas.eu/bio%20lab%20symbiolab,%20irnas,%20goodenoughcnc/2016/07/05/solar-powered-goodenoughcnc-and-diy-bioscience-at-art-kamp-lent-festival

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3D Printed DIY Battery Packs from Old Laptop Batteries

I found two old discarded batteries from HP and Lenovo laptops I owned which did not hold the charge and I was wandering what to do with them. I googled and found that they may actually hold 18650 battery cells that are still in working order. If the internal battery management system detects that even one of usually six cells is not in line with working parameters it will probably shut down the entire battery.

"Dead" laptop batteries. Used force and screwdriver to open them. Watch your fingers, you will need them trough entire life. You can see the 18650 LiPo modules in blue and green.

I discovered that there a hundreds of projects using the same refurbished module ranging from simple cell phone power packs to large solar system batteries.

Here is a tutorial on how to make a replacement hand drill battery pack with 3d printer and 18650 modules from http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:1042761:



Here is a tutorial on how to create a larger battery pack with 3d printed frame modules for storage of solar power that can be used in small electric vehicles:




Thingiverse page:

http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:1320696

There is large number of 3d printed projects with 18650 battery modules:

http://www.thingiverse.com/tag:18650/page:1

Also take a look at: http://www.instructables.com/howto/18650/

Do keep in mind that you will have to test each module and that there will be some that are just dead and can not be used.

Since you can make battery of any size, you can literally make a Tesla powerwall equivalent for a fraction of the originals 3500+ USD price. This guy made a DIY Tesla powerwall for some 300 USD:





Think about it: a battery for your entire house for just 300 USD made from junk old laptop batteries. You will probably have many many questions so I strongly recommend checking the entire content on Jehu Garcia YT channel. This guy is a battery guru!

Soon I'm going to visit our regional electronic waste processing company in town of Slavonski Brod to see if they can give me more old laptop batteries to salvage the 18650 modules.

Do you have any experiences with 18650 batteries or any projects you made? Let me know in the comments!

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DIY Stirling heat difference engine with 3d printed parts

Doug Conner developed a 3d printable homemade Stirling engine, a type of motor that creates mechanical motion from temperature differential of a medium which is air in this case. The engine is made in ABS on a Stratasys FDM printer.

This engine has some metal (brass, aluminum) parts, couple of metal screws and some rubber O-rings, but that is unavoidable due to the nature of the technology and ABS material limitations.

It takes some 50 deg F (or 28 deg C) of heat differential to move at stable speed at about 300 rpm without additional weight or load.
Project homepage:

http://www.solarheatengines.com/2012/10/29/3d-printed-stirling-engine/

All the 3d files and plans to make this Stirling engine can be found at:

http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:34709

Here is video demonstration of the engine in action:

Doug's DIY 3d printed Stirling engine from the project homepage

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MetalicaRap DIY electron beam welding and vapor deposition 3d printer

MetalicaRap is an open source DIY 3D metal  home solar cell printer, based on the principles of electron beam welding and vapor deposition. MetalicaRap is currently in the early design and development phase.

The goal is to have affordable home-manufacturing of solar cells, key electrical parts and milled-quality metal parts. MetalicaRap has a very ambitious mission to bring down a price of home solar power system from 10.000 euro to 400-500 euro range by printing it.
If this projects is successfully developed it could make a major revolution in DIY 3d printing, solar power and DIY electronics.

This project is too big and complex to cover in this post, I'll follow it and update it but be sure to check the project homepage for much more information.

MetalicaRap

Proposed technical characteristics:

• A build volume of about 30cm x 30cm x30cm (prototype will be 24cmx24cmx24cm as this is min that can still print babies)
• Produces finished parts +/- 20 µm over 20mm
• Finished parts should be the metallurgical equivalent to wrought iron milled metal parts(full strength, >98% density)
• The printer is largely self reproducing(i.e. it can print many of its own parts)
• Single Phase electrical supply
• Minimum consumables beyond metal powder (avoiding need for e.g. argon gas would be an advantage for later designs)
• Cost for parts which it cannot itself print plus the raw material for printable parts is less than the cost of a used car (self replication plus self build kit may reduce the price by approximately 100 times i.e. from the existing price of a metal 3D printer or solar cell plant; 1,000,000 euro price tag,to 10,000 euro self print/kit price. historically the plastic printer went from 30,000 euro commercial price to 500 euro in 2009 via this approach)
• The build-rate can be slow i.e. 0.2 kg per hour.
• Max height should be 2.4m so it can fit in a home. ( first/simpler to construct prototype will be taller than this until we know how much we can bend beam while maintaining spot size, the bigger the bend the shorter it will become)
• Shape and size of vacuum chamber and electron gun power rating should be suitable for Solar Cell Printing(300W).

Since it is a high tech advanced design with many sophisticated technologies integrated in single device, here are some advantages and disadvantages:

Advantages of current chosen design approach

• Fully functional parts directly from standard metals
• For most parts it may offer dimensionally finished metal parts IT grade 7
• Good metallurgy on all common metals (Melting process rather than sintering process ensures near 100% of solid material)
• Closed loop system
• Self measurement of finished part tolerances.
• May offer automatic self correction (subtractive machining steps during build process and feedback with compensation used in the additive process).
• Eventual additional Benefits;
• Can print thin film CIGS Solar cells in existing 10−4vacuum chamber with existing electron gun. Will be able to self print additional required parts for solar cell printer.
• Can create its own metal powder from scrap metal.
• Can finish the refining process for titanium metal by melting titanium sponge, which may lead to a 25 fold reduction in the titanium price.

Disadvantages of current chosen design approach

• Vacuum chamber needs on going maintenance.
• Given the quantity and quality of metal/materials used in 10-4 torr vacuum chamber construction they may have high cost or be hard to obtain. (Limited outgasing required)
• Difficultly in managing metal powders, indicated by the need to have layer error correction, Problem area's including; powder layer flatness, metal meniscus blob formation, metal powder trapped in work piece (i.e. designed internal closed cavities, designed internal porous or honeycomb structures most likely impossible without additional processing or work on the part after printing).
• Quality Control may be a hurdle to overcome - on the fly heat treatment process development (to overcome residual stress present in the first few layers) may be desirable but optional. Layer by layer temperature measurement is one way for metallurgical quality assurance. Currently multiple printed and tested tensile test samples are used to prove most processes. This is a problem in general for additive manufacturing of all sorts at present.
• Adequate surface finish may require post processing, depending on the purpose of the part.Later by the addition of argon we could do electronbeam polishing.
• Non-desktop size wardrobe size,chamber volume approx 0.3m cubed.

MetalicaRap homepage on RepRapWiki, it has very detailed and extensive information and technical drawings of the project:

http://reprap.org/wiki/MetalicaRap

there is a project forum: http://forums.reprap.org/list.php?215%7Cthe

Here is a video that demonstrates the electron beam evaporation and deposition process:

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SPOR solar battery charger with 3d printable case

Spor is a self-regenerating battery charger for USB devices. It can be charged by an outlet or passively via the sun. It can charge multiple devices at once, and can charge your phone practically as fast as a wall outlet. It also had 3d printable case.
Go and check it out:

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/spor/spor-solar-battery-chargers-usb-cables-and-accesso

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Peppermint Energy FORTY2 suitcase solar generator developed with 3d printing prototyping

From video description:

Peppermint Energy, based in a South Dakota, has developed a portable, plug-and-play solar generator called the FORTY2.

Described as a solar plant in a suitcase, the FORTY2 draws enough juice from the sun to power lights, laptops — even a dorm fridge. A battery stashes power and delivers it after sundown.
Originally a cool product idea for tailgaters and campers, this quickly became a potential life changing source of energy for developing countries where three billion people live without reliable electricity. That means medicine that requires refrigeration could reach places it couldn't go before. The device could also spark commerce in remote areas as entrepreneurs find ways to monetize free reliable power.
Watch the story behind this remarkable device and how Stratasys 3D printing based on FDM™ technology using ABS plastic delivered a durable full scale prototype. Just one of the prototyping benefits - Peppermint decided to make the whole device even smaller than intended after carrying the first prototype proved awkward.

http://www.peppermintenergy.com/

FORTY2 video:



Source:

http://blog.stratasys.com/2014/01/10/peppermint-energy-3d-printed-solar-generator/

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