Author Topic: 3D printing rocket engines  (Read 88308 times)

Offline JasonAW3

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Re: 3D printing rocket engines
« Reply #60 on: 06/24/2014 11:34 am »
Do you think biological deposition could work as well as nanotech?  It occurs to me that there are a number of metal eating bacteria that, properly tweaked genetically, could be spread upon a basic form, and then start building up a metallic structure, much the same as coral deposits are formed.  Controlled growth could great some fairly complex forms, which could then be flushed out in much the same way as the lost wax technique of metal casting, except in this case, the mold IS the casting.

Such a technique should be a whole lot easier to produce than development of nanotech.

In retrospect, putting small asteroids in a warm, moist atmosphere and allowing an extractive variety of the Sam sort of bacteria could make mining of asteroids a WHOLE lot simpler.
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Offline Asteroza

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Re: 3D printing rocket engines
« Reply #61 on: 06/24/2014 11:36 pm »
Bionanotech sorta runs with that concept, using biologically based molecular engines and assemblers, for secreting stuff and working with certain "self assembling" types of composites. Synthetic organisms or tweaked existing organisms (particularly heat/metal tolerant extremophile bacteria) appear to be one path towards this, particular for surface coatings. For the cores of structural materials, the lack of fine control might be an issue though depending on the properties desired.

Offline JasonAW3

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Re: 3D printing rocket engines
« Reply #62 on: 06/25/2014 12:35 am »
Bionanotech sorta runs with that concept, using biologically based molecular engines and assemblers, for secreting stuff and working with certain "self assembling" types of composites. Synthetic organisms or tweaked existing organisms (particularly heat/metal tolerant extremophile bacteria) appear to be one path towards this, particular for surface coatings. For the cores of structural materials, the lack of fine control might be an issue though depending on the properties desired.

I think that this might be the superior method of 3d printing.  Spray on a bacterial coating to a base form, present a steady feedstock, (granulated or powdered metals) and allow the bacteria to build up the structure much like coral would.  In those areas where the build up is uneven, simply add more bacteria and feedstock.
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Offline Prober

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Re: 3D printing rocket engines
« Reply #63 on: 06/25/2014 02:18 am »
My report on 3D printing in space will be out next month. It will discuss some of these issues.

Don't believe the hype. The hype is crazy. People who use and design these machines will tell you to not believe the hype.
Agrees 100%

As for increasing manufacturing speed, it can be done with a lot of caveats. Keep in mind that up to now, there has not been much effort to increase 3D printing speeds. But it could be done in certain ways for certain kinds of materials and parts. For instance, multiple print heads that are all on the same movement device. That way you could build up multiple versions at once. For some objects and with some materials, that may be a solution.

But 3D printing is never going to replace all aspects of production. It is likely to replace a few things in the overall process. But there are production processes that have been refined to very high degrees over many many decades, and 3D printing isn't going to leap ahead of them. It's a manufacturing technique, not magic. And in fact, for some things it is difficult to see how 3D printing could replace parts of the production process. For example, 3D printing just is not very high resolution, so for something like optics, where you want high precision, you're never going to get it out of a 3D printer.

I showed you the way on Optics its being done.   Nano 3D Printers are coming along, and a low cost version will be out sooner rather than later.  If you wish a review of your info let me know I'm game.

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Offline Ronsmytheiii

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Re: 3D printing rocket engines
« Reply #64 on: 06/25/2014 03:17 am »
But fundamentally, this statement is true. Tradition manufacturing set up in a factory line has unbeatable per-part speeds. I mean, you can have stamped parts flying out in just a few seconds while a good print of a functionally similar part would take hours. That's 3 and a half orders of magnitude different.

Or you can use a 3D printer to create a cast for traditional casting, so the line between traditional manufacturing and 3D printing blurs.

Offline docmordrid

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Re: 3D printing rocket engines
« Reply #65 on: 06/25/2014 03:27 am »
http://www.3ders.org/articles/20140110-epson-to-launch-industrial-3d-printers-within-five-years.html

Quote
Jan.10, 2014

Epson is developing industrial, multi-material 3D printers, said president Minoru Usui recently when he attended Epson's 30th anniversary celebration in Sydney, Australia.

Usui said the company would be focused on developing 3D printers for commercial applications – such as in large-scale production environments – and not for consumers.
>
>
So what kind of printer is Epson working on? "We are developing our own printers, but our aim is to change everything. When it comes to 3D printing... we want our machines to make anything." Usui told Engadget at CES 2014. This "anything" could mean "cars" - Usui believes cars or its parts can be printed using additive manufacturing. It will take time to improve the technology and materials, but Usui expects Epson will launch its first industrial 3D printer within 5 years.
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Offline TrevorMonty

Re: 3D printing rocket engines
« Reply #66 on: 06/25/2014 04:42 am »
But fundamentally, this statement is true. Tradition manufacturing set up in a factory line has unbeatable per-part speeds. I mean, you can have stamped parts flying out in just a few seconds while a good print of a functionally similar part would take hours. That's 3 and a half orders of magnitude different.

Or you can use a 3D printer to create a cast for traditional casting, so the line between traditional manufacturing and 3D printing blurs.

Creating tooling for mass production is normally very expensive, this is one area 3D printing comes into it own. We had to spend $10,000 on the injection mould for a simply plastic item 10 years ago. If this can be reduced to $1-2,000 suddenly small production runs become viable.


Offline Prober

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Re: 3D printing rocket engines
« Reply #67 on: 06/25/2014 11:50 am »
But fundamentally, this statement is true. Tradition manufacturing set up in a factory line has unbeatable per-part speeds. I mean, you can have stamped parts flying out in just a few seconds while a good print of a functionally similar part would take hours. That's 3 and a half orders of magnitude different.

Or you can use a 3D printer to create a cast for traditional casting, so the line between traditional manufacturing and 3D printing blurs.

yes, recently saw a utube video where they automated the small parts casting.....it opened a lot of doors.
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Offline Prober

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Re: 3D printing rocket engines
« Reply #68 on: 06/25/2014 12:03 pm »
http://www.3ders.org/articles/20140110-epson-to-launch-industrial-3d-printers-within-five-years.html

Quote
Jan.10, 2014

Epson is developing industrial, multi-material 3D printers, said president Minoru Usui recently when he attended Epson's 30th anniversary celebration in Sydney, Australia.

Usui said the company would be focused on developing 3D printers for commercial applications – such as in large-scale production environments – and not for consumers.
>
>
So what kind of printer is Epson working on? "We are developing our own printers, but our aim is to change everything. When it comes to 3D printing... we want our machines to make anything." Usui told Engadget at CES 2014. This "anything" could mean "cars" - Usui believes cars or its parts can be printed using additive manufacturing. It will take time to improve the technology and materials, but Usui expects Epson will launch its first industrial 3D printer within 5 years.

Yeah, Epson is a great company and has many technologies that can be transferred over.   Many don't know that one of Epson's sister companies is Seko Epson that manufactures inexpensive assembly robots.   

The real amazing driver is the Reprap "open source" community.  As an example the Delta platform has been perfected for the most part now.   www.seemecnc.com (great guys).   Those deltas are dirt cheap and can be used for assembly.  Over a year ago a home grown chip shooter for pcb board assembly, was made out of a delta. It cost next to nothing to build.
2017 - Everything Old is New Again.
"I fear all we have done is to awaken a sleeping giant..." --Isoroku Yamamoto

Offline Scylla

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Re: 3D printing rocket engines
« Reply #69 on: 08/20/2014 10:02 pm »
Aerojet Rocketdyne Awarded Large-Scale 3-D Printing Defense Contract to Develop Liquid Rocket Engine Applications
http://www.americaspace.com/?p=66087
http://www.rocket.com/article/aerojet-rocketdyne-awarded-defense-contract-large-scale-additive-manufacturing

SACRAMENTO, Calif., Aug 18, 2014 – Aerojet Rocketdyne, a GenCorp (NYSE: GY) company, was recently awarded a contract by Wright-Patterson Air Force Base through the Defense Production Act Title III Office for large-scale additive manufacturing development and demonstration. The contract will secure multiple large selective laser melting machines to develop liquid rocket engine applications for national security space launch services. Aerojet Rocketdyne and its subcontractors will design and develop larger scale parts to be converted from conventional manufacturing to additive manufacturing (3D printing).
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Offline docmordrid

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Re: 3D printing rocket engines
« Reply #70 on: 08/21/2014 03:22 am »
http://www.nasaspaceflight.com/2014/08/spacex-dragon-iss-spacewalk-save/

Quote
L2 sources also note that parts for SpaceX’s next generation engine, the Raptor, are currently being 3D printed at the company’s Hawthorne base in California.
« Last Edit: 08/21/2014 03:24 am by docmordrid »
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Offline Vultur

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Re: 3D printing rocket engines
« Reply #71 on: 08/21/2014 06:06 am »
Do you think biological deposition could work as well as nanotech?  It occurs to me that there are a number of metal eating bacteria that, properly tweaked genetically, could be spread upon a basic form, and then start building up a metallic structure, much the same as coral deposits are formed.

IIRC biological production of metal in metallic form (as opposed to metal ions in solution, which are ubiquitous, or metal-containing "rock" or minerals like calcium phosphate - in our bones , calcium carbonate -- in shells, iron sulfide -- which I believe some deep sea organism uses for plating/shells) is extremely rare.

There are some bacteria that produce tiny metal nanoparticles. There was some recent news about some wasps apparently having metal of some sort in their stings and/or ovipositors, but the things I've seen never quite come out and say that it's actually in metallic form, just that it contains metal (some even say 'ionized').

So I'm kind of skeptical of any vaguely near term use of biology to produce metal structures of significant size.

I think you could do quite a lot with biological manipulation of materials -- it deserves a lot of study, there's some interesting stuff like microbes that make inorganic nanotubes that are a semiconductor -- but this specific application seems like a stretch.

Offline docmordrid

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Re: 3D printing rocket engines
« Reply #72 on: 08/21/2014 11:11 am »
Some guys at Michigan State used Cupriavidus metallidurans to extract 24ct gold from gold chloride.
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Offline Vultur

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Re: 3D printing rocket engines
« Reply #73 on: 08/22/2014 04:46 am »
Some guys at Michigan State used Cupriavidus metallidurans to extract 24ct gold from gold chloride.

Ah, OK, cool, I hadn't heard of that particular one.  I'd heard of Shewanella bacteria producing silver nanoparticles:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20509652

 These abstracts
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23405956
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19815503
say that Cupriavidus also produces nanoparticles (which can then aggregate into micrometer sized particles)

It's extremely interesting, yes... but it seems like it would take a huge amount of engineering to get something like a rocket engine out of this. It's probably hypothetically possible... there are plenty of complex inorganic/mineral structures produced by living things...  but it seems far off at best (and would it really be faster/better than other methods even if you could get it? Maybe if you wanted to do it with minimal-to-no infrastructure for some reason, just feed the minerals to a self-replicating living mass of the organism...)

Offline jongoff

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Re: 3D printing rocket engines
« Reply #74 on: 08/22/2014 05:12 am »
When I first started at Masten in 2004, we were working on a GOX/GH2 catalytic igniter, and were looking at doing a metal 3d printed part as a way to get the intimate mixing you need to make that type of system work. While I agree wholeheartedly that our change to just doing spark torch igniters was the right call, I almost wish we had gone through with it, because we probably could've claimed to be the first company using 3d printing for rocket engine parts... Oh well. :-)

~Jon

Offline docmordrid

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Re: 3D printing rocket engines
« Reply #75 on: 08/22/2014 05:51 am »
http://www.spacenews.com/article/launch-report/41626aerojet-rocketdyne-to-3-d-print-rocket-engine-parts-under-air-force-demo

Quote
Aerojet Rocketdyne To 3-D Print Rocket Engine Parts under Air Force Demo

WASHINGTON — Aerojet Rocketdyne will demonstrate the use of additive manufacturing techniques to produce selected, full-scale rocket engine components under a Defense Production Act (DPA) Title 3 contract awarded by the U.S. Air Force Research Laboratory, the company announced Aug. 20.
>
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Offline A_M_Swallow

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Re: 3D printing rocket engines
« Reply #77 on: 12/17/2014 03:10 am »
A 3D printed propulsion system for cubesats from Aerojet.

http://www.parabolicarc.com/2014/12/16/aerojet-completes-hot-fire-3d-printed-cubesat-propulsion-system/#more-54182

It costs about $100,000 to launch a 1U cubesat.  It may be worthwhile Aerojet building its own cubesat to take the propulsion system to TRL 9.

Offline Prober

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Re: 3D printing rocket engines
« Reply #78 on: 12/17/2014 11:27 am »
Story from the 3D Printer section

Aerojet Rocketdyne Successfully Test Fires CubeSat Rocket with 3D Printed Piston       http://tinyurl.com/lbaa6sg
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Offline cordwainer

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Re: 3D printing rocket engines
« Reply #79 on: 12/28/2014 03:42 am »
Makes me wonder how far away we are from 3D printing solid fuel rocket boosters for small payload launches?

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