NASA test-fires 3D printed rocket parts: low cost, high power innovation

Propulsion engineers focus on R&D and pushing new tech into private industry.

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[Z1ggy]

This is awesome.

and the idea that companies will be able to use the research later is even better.

 

[potato44819]

You wouldn't download a rocket...

No wait, yes I would!

 

[Workaround]

Lee, you should totally get DMLS printer to test next. I want to see a titanium Ars T-Rex ASAP.

 

[phongn]

Z1ggy[/url]":1dxcbdpw]This is awesome.

and the idea that companies will be able to use the research later is even better.

NASA has a long and proud history of that; many innovations in aerospace were first developed at NASA and then commercialized by industry.

 

[FrankM]

Of course, NASA's 3D printing doesn't have much in common with the kind of home 3D printing I've spent the past few weeks experiencing.

You should have shown up with your lotus bowl and told everyone that was the injector plate.

 

[AnonymousRich]

Now this is a really cool use for 3D printing.

Do they still X-ray the parts for defects?

My first thought was that this could really help reduce the cost of a launch vehicle. My second thought was that I have no idea of comparative costs.

But any way you look at it, this is a step in the right direction.

 

[charleski]

NASA also devloped a different 3D-printing method called EBF3. It would be interesting to know what the trade-offs are between the two processes.

 

[MisterMano]

Now that's awesome news!
I'm actually left wondering how much cheaper it is to 3D print these components.
For an agency that gets bigger budget cuts every year to be able to boast that they now can try more physical designs, it must mean that the price really went down. Something like 80% maybe?

 

[BoilerTom]

AnonymousRich[/url]":3ieyx9u9]Now this is a really cool use for 3D printing.

Do they still X-ray the parts for defects?

My first thought was that this could really help reduce the cost of a launch vehicle. My second thought was that I have no idea of comparative costs.

But any way you look at it, this is a step in the right direction.

Current DLMS printed parts are somewhat cost competitive with something made via wire EDM - Still very expensive but in the ballpark . The big advantage is lead time and being able to use internal geometries that would otherwise be unmanufacturable. In this case, NASA is only making one part that would orginally need 3 or more pieces joined together to create the fuel routing channels, and they can have that part on their doorstep 2 days after finishing the design.

 

[Boskone]

I wonder how much small-scale testing NASA does. I mean, there's bound to be things you can learn about an injector design without actually attaching it to a rocket and firing it to the tune of a gazillion gallons of fuel per second.

If that's the case, I'd imagine the "new" R&D design and iteration process is both faster and cheaper than previously; potentially markedly so, if you're testing a $5,000 part instead of an entire $whateverAnF1bEngineCosts part.

 

[BoilerTom]

N

MisterMano[/url]":2l7ezlk0]Now that's awesome news!
I'm actually left wondering how much cheaper it is to 3D print these components.
For an agency that gets bigger budget cuts every year to be able to boast that they now can try more physical designs, it must mean that the price really went down. Something like 80% maybe?

NASA's budget has actually been higher and pretty stable the last 10 years
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Budget_of_NASA

 

[InflictStrain]

A very clever workaround to the issue of a shrinking budget. That the part (and process) work so well is simply amazing. I thought printing a working firearm was challenging enough, but a rocket part capable of withstanding 20,000 pounds of thrust? Mind blowing.

And this:

Williams sees NASA's work in this space as part of the service that a responsible government agency should be providing.

is definitely something I can appreciate and respect. NASA has a long history of being a tech incubator, and I'm glad to see that legacy being carried forward.

 

[AnonymousRich]

BoilerTom[/url]":2pda2sxu]

AnonymousRich[/url]":2pda2sxu]Now this is a really cool use for 3D printing.

Do they still X-ray the parts for defects?

My first thought was that this could really help reduce the cost of a launch vehicle. My second thought was that I have no idea of comparative costs.

But any way you look at it, this is a step in the right direction.

Current DLMS printed parts are somewhat cost competitive with something made via wire EDM - Still very expensive but in the ballpark . The big advantage is lead time and being able to use internal geometries that would otherwise be unmanufacturable. In this case, NASA is only making one part that would orginally need 3 or more pieces joined together to create the fuel routing channels, and they can have that part on their doorstep 2 days after finishing the design.

Thanx for the info. I would imagine that the rapid production from design specs could lead to better designs and more thorough testing in any given timeframe.

 

[pokrface]

InflictStrain[/url]":2fan1fzx]A very clever workaround to the issue of a shrinking budget. That the part (and process) work so well is simply amazing. I thought printing a working firearm was challenging enough, but a rocket part capable of withstanding 20,000 pounds of thrust? Mind blowing.

Well, they're laser-forming metal objects from metal powder—copper, aluminum, titanium, and steel. Strength isn't the issue. The technical hurdle is the precision and rapidity with which the parts can be formed.

 

[FrankM]

Pokrface[/url]":2cydq7mv]

InflictStrain[/url]":2cydq7mv]A very clever workaround to the issue of a shrinking budget. That the part (and process) work so well is simply amazing. I thought printing a working firearm was challenging enough, but a rocket part capable of withstanding 20,000 pounds of thrust? Mind blowing.

Well, they're laser-forming metal objects from metal powder—copper, aluminum, titanium, and steel. Strength isn't the issue. The technical hurdle is the precision and rapidity with which the parts can be formed.

It's not immediately obvious that laser-sintered powder is as strong as a machined block of the same material... though this test obviously proves it's strong enough.

 

[lisabeeren]

"Rather than spending a tremendous amount of time performing deep, computer-based analyses of rocket components, NASA can rough in a design and then print and test a component within hours or days."

hey! using reality to perform computer simulations! love it!

 

[carldjennings]

Can they 3D print a 3D printer? Change the scale, make a 3D printer a mile high, and print out whole rockets!

 

[SBD]

Slow your roll, folks.

Strength isn't a hurdle, nor is precision or rapidity. This really isn't new technology at all, every aerospace firm has had additive capability for a decade plus - the amount of money spent on this technology is truly mind blowing. The problem is finding an application for it outside of prototyping.

You're talking about taking some of the highest quality, most expensive input stock (regular, fine metallic powders of a regular size distribution) and turning it into the crappiest part of an aerospace structure: a weld nugget. Static strength isn't too hard to achieve, but any of your durability and damage tolerance properties are a mess for something that you want to fly more than once (or even survive a violent single flight). Which brings to light other issue... if you have a part that you don't care about (missile casings come to mind), you're usually making them at high enough rate that a set of hard tooling for forgings or whatever is an order of magnitude cheaper than additive manufacturing. If you're making something that flies once that you do care about, like a rocket motor, the cost per pound of weight on the vehicle makes flying around sub-par material not worth the cost savings on the production end for the weight hit you take on the back end.

Don't get me wrong, enabling prototyping like this is awesome, and exactly why this technology is valuable, but there is still A LOT of work before it becomes common to make production runs of components for new designs.

 

[Dilbert]

carldjennings[/url]":2s7hsahq]Can they 3D print a 3D printer? Change the scale, make a 3D printer a mile high, and print out whole rockets!

Someday that will be the norm. And kids will laugh at our factories with robots soldering and welding and riveting and bolting subassemblies into larger products, just like we laugh at someone carving a wagon wheel out of a piece of timber. Manufacture as we understand it today will probably be a hobby or possibly an art form, just like woodcarving today.

But that day is still in the future.

Edit: delta V = Ve * ln (m0 / m1) BITCHES! I will fly a rover to Duna in honor of this tonight.

 

[godel]

Gizmag had a good piece on this last week.

The Marshall Center engineers built the subscale injectors as a one-piece component in just three weeks and at a cost less than US$5,000 by sintering Inconel steel powder using a state-of-the-art 3D printer. In comparison, traditional subscale rocket injectors are made up of four parts and take six months to fabricate, weld, and machine at a cost of more than US$10,000 each.

Direct laser melting isn't actually sintering and Inconel isn't a steel, but what the hell.

http://www.gizmag.com/3d-printed-rocket ... asa/28469/

 

[Christopher James Huff]

FrankM[/url]":2j2tz4hy]It's not immediately obvious that laser-sintered powder is as strong as a machined block of the same material... though this test obviously proves it's strong enough.

The technique is called "Laser Sintering", but for many of these systems, it's a misnomer: the metal powder is actually completely melted onto the surface of the part, not just sintered.

"Laser Deposition" is a more accurate term (though it seems more popular for freeform approaches), and there's some good videos of it in action on YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SYbw1oSzPVA

 

[hobgoblin]

Phong Nguyen[/url]":t7v21c52]

Z1ggy[/url]":t7v21c52]This is awesome.

and the idea that companies will be able to use the research later is even better.

NASA has a long and proud history of that; many innovations in aerospace were first developed at NASA and then commercialized by industry.

That the history of technology really. Most have at one point or other been developed to by funding from the that powers that be, usually for war, while allowing private enterprise to keep all profits from its commercial applications.

The cold war was a hot spot for this kind of stuff, thanks to the one-upmanship between USA and Russia.

 

[taswyn]

Could anyone elaborate on rough comparative costs of additive manufacturing using DMLS versus machining?

3D printing in general is a fantastic technology for certain things, but it's not without its pitfalls and difficulties, as well as having targets where it is far more suitable than "traditional" methods.

I'm curious as to how those cost factors relate to something like rocketry, where some parts would seem to be relatively easy to machine (if still not very cheap, since many wouldn't benefit from economies of scale there). At the same time I have basically no grasp of the costs of such machining work or in turn the costs of manufacturing via DMLS for either more simple or more complicated pieces.

Are machining costs basically cost of the metal billet or rough molded piece, and then the machinist's time? And then extra cost for any plating/etc that needs to be done in addition to what are essentially time-cost related finishing procedures?

Is the DMLS material cost higher, and by what rough degree? Are the design costs higher with DMLS, but operating costs themselves lower?

The article refers to cost savings, but I feel like I'm swimming in the dark on this in terms of grasping just what that translates to, even in any rough sense.

 

[Technophobia]

Totally messed up my post, so I'm just deleting.

 

[qchronod]

taswyn[/url]":3m3u1ms6]Could anyone elaborate on rough comparative costs of additive manufacturing using DMLS versus machining?

3D printing in general is a fantastic technology for certain things, but it's not without its pitfalls and difficulties, as well as having targets where it is far more suitable than "traditional" methods.

I'm curious as to how those cost factors relate to something like rocketry, where some parts would seem to be relatively easy to machine (if still not very cheap, since many wouldn't benefit from economies of scale there). At the same time I have basically no grasp of the costs of such machining work or in turn the costs of manufacturing via DMLS for either more simple or more complicated pieces.

Are machining costs basically cost of the metal billet or rough molded piece, and then the machinist's time? And then extra cost for any plating/etc that needs to be done in addition to what are essentially time-cost related finishing procedures?

Is the DMLS material cost higher, and by what rough degree? Are the design costs higher with DMLS, but operating costs themselves lower?

The article refers to cost savings, but I feel like I'm swimming in the dark on this in terms of grasping just what that translates to, even in any rough sense.

I'm not an expert, or even an amateur, but I would say that traditional costs are probably a lot less for the material than they are the machining and assembly time. You're paying for lots of excess material that is going to get removed, then you have the time cost of the CNC machines, people/robots welding parts together, etc.

With the printing, the metal powder is a lot more expensive and the machine does everything in one go. (Assuming the costs to design are equivalent)

 

[Veritas super omens]

charleski[/url]":2r60oq1m]NASA also devloped a different 3D-printing method called EBF3. It would be interesting to know what the trade-offs are between the two processes.

Thanks for the link! I would love to see ars develop a regular feature on materials science. Stuff just fascinates me. Anybody else think so?

 

[Evil_Merlin]

The PW F100, at full power, produce 29160 lbf . You may be thinking of maximum dry thrust, but full power does include the cans all lit up...

 

[hobgoblin]

charleski[/url]":3k5f8hfy]NASA also devloped a different 3D-printing method called EBF3. It would be interesting to know what the trade-offs are between the two processes.

A 20kV electron beam in a vacuum chamber doing with metal what current desktop printers are doing with plastic, color me impressed (and a bit scared).

 

[Findecanor]

My local makerspace actually bought a laser-depositing metal 3D printer a couple of months ago, but we have still not got around to installing the huge beast. We got a really good deal, it was crowdfunded and we thought it would be cool.
The previous owner had used it for making custom moulds out for steel for injection-moulding. 3D-printing had allowed there to be better cooling channels than what could have been machined.
The machine will need inert gas, especially when printing a more exotic material, such as titanium, so we will probably stick with steel. We sure are interested in cheap sources of steel powder.

 

[pokrface]

Evil_Merlin[/url]":37fjq8jf]The PW F100, at full power, produce 29160 lbf . You may be thinking of maximum dry thrust, but full power does include the cans all lit up...

Yeah, I thought I had "full military power" in the original draft. Will correct.

 

[Dilbert]

Evil_Merlin[/url]":1nw3sy3q]The PW F100, at full power, produce 29160 lbf . You may be thinking of maximum dry thrust, but full power does include the cans all lit up...

HA! Someone else caught that too? Fuel flow at full AB at altitude is what 60,000-70,000? At that rate even with gas bags you got about 12 minutes of fuel in the F16.

 

[tsudo]

"In 2008, about eighty percent of our workforce was focused on supporting Shuttle and keeping the shuttle flying safely and on getting Ares designed," he explained. Now, in the post-Shuttle and post-Constellation world, "we're about forty percent focused on SLS. So sixty percent of our workforce is working on research and technology development: things that can help push the industry to new levels that they wouldn't otherwise be able to achieve."

This is where NASA should be, R&D, not spending billions keeping white elephants afloat for decades.

 

[kindakrazy]

"Without additive manufacturing, prototype rocket parts that can withstand actual hot-firing can cost so much and take so long to produce that when you finally get a physical component to test, you're already hoping the tests show that it's perfect—otherwise it would take too long to redesign. With additive manufacturing, that paralysis goes away, and engineers can iterate as needed on actual physical components."

What this really means, is that NASA's budget will soon be reduced to a level where they are back in analysis paralysis.

 

[tsudo]

More on-topic..

I use 3D printers at my work (R&D). They've been a great boon to me because I can easily tweak and try out different designs without sending a tool-maker into the workshop for a day or two with my best-guess sketches of what I think I need.

If it doesn't work, I just open up the CAD model, make a quick change then fire up the printer again. It might take half a day to print, but it's far faster than getting someone to re-machine a new part from scratch.

And because it's lowered the real cost of producing a part, I'm much more inclined to experiment and try things that I might have been less inclined to risk previously.

I wonder if SpaceX uses such techniques (?).

 

[Luciens]

taswyn[/url]":2dukbhgd]Could anyone elaborate on rough comparative costs of additive manufacturing using DMLS versus machining?

3D printing in general is a fantastic technology for certain things, but it's not without its pitfalls and difficulties, as well as having targets where it is far more suitable than "traditional" methods.

I'm curious as to how those cost factors relate to something like rocketry, where some parts would seem to be relatively easy to machine (if still not very cheap, since many wouldn't benefit from economies of scale there). At the same time I have basically no grasp of the costs of such machining work or in turn the costs of manufacturing via DMLS for either more simple or more complicated pieces.

Are machining costs basically cost of the metal billet or rough molded piece, and then the machinist's time? And then extra cost for any plating/etc that needs to be done in addition to what are essentially time-cost related finishing procedures?

Is the DMLS material cost higher, and by what rough degree? Are the design costs higher with DMLS, but operating costs themselves lower?

The article refers to cost savings, but I feel like I'm swimming in the dark on this in terms of grasping just what that translates to, even in any rough sense.

This is a one of those good questions that is difficult to answer.

Both CNC machining (subtractive prototyping) and SLS/DMLS (additive prototyping) have different strengths and weaknesses so a direct cost comparison is really difficult. Most generally speaking you have to look at the complexity of a part and the number of parts you want to make and then asses which process would be most cost effective.

If you design a seriously complex part that is going to be fed into a 5 axis CNC machine (http://youtu.be/PWJAeEzqdc4) then there is going to be a significant time investment in plotting the tool paths to mill out the final component. This can range well into the hundreds of work hours for highly trained machinists, having to divide a single part into multiple parts because of manufacturing limitations and multiple failed attempts before the process is dialed in and a finished component is ready. The upside is that after this initial process has been done you can theoretically knock out as many parts as you like at a lower fixed cost.

With additive prototyping you can essentially just load a 3D model into the machine and come back later for a (somewhat) finished part.

With subtractive prototyping you are going to have much higher setup costs and lower per-part costs. With additive you will generally have lower setup expenses and much higher per-part costs.

What is talked about less is how the growing availability of additive manufacturing at the industrial scale really starts to open up innovation. With CNC parts you are essentially starting a small scale production line in motion that is better suited for creating multiple parts to create a one-off. This can create a lot of pressure to make something that you know will work vs having the leeway to try something a little different.

 

[crash13]

charleski[/url]":2zuwtrjk]NASA also devloped a different 3D-printing method called EBF3. It would be interesting to know what the trade-offs are between the two processes.

I'll preface this reply with the fact that I'm one of the two developers of the process at NASA Langley Research Center and have been working with it for the last 12 years.

The basic diferences between the two processes are that DMLS is done in a powder bed, while EBF3 uses a wire feedstock. There are several implications to this:
1) The powder bed size (and associated inert gas shielding chamber) puts a limit on part size. While it is possible to build a larger powder bed, you start to run in to diminishing returns - the bed needs to be filled (lots of expensive powder) and leveled and each layer needs to be a precise thickness.
2) EBF3 is done in a vacuum chamber with a wire feedstock. All of the feedstock is incorporated in the final build. Our current laboratory system has a vacuum chamber 7 feet by 9 feet by 9 feet with a build volume of 4 feet by 4 feet by 6 feet. Pumpdown time to working vacuum is ~25 minutes.
3) Deposition rates are hugely different: DMLS is several cubic inches per hour; the one production application for EBF3 is 150 cubic inches per hour.

Any aerospace components produced by any of the metal additive manufacturing processes will require heat treatment. Our experience with aluminum and titanium alloys is that the tensile, fatigue and fracture properties are comparable to wrought properties.

 

[HtFox]

BoilerTom[/url]":zjc1kq4u]

Current DLMS printed parts are somewhat cost competitive with something made via wire EDM - Still very expensive but in the ballpark . The big advantage is lead time and being able to use internal geometries that would otherwise be unmanufacturable. In this case, NASA is only making one part that would orginally need 3 or more pieces joined together to create the fuel routing channels, and they can have that part on their doorstep 2 days after finishing the design.

The saved time makes up for much of the extra costs. Lets assume an engineer at Nasa gets 60USD per hour and would have to wait a month for the traditional product. Also lets asume we need 5 Engineers for the project.

If your engineers have to "iddle" a month till the part arrives you will loose (5 Engineers x 160hours x 60USD) 48000 Dollars. The printing process while more expensive makes good on time. With just two days (16 workhours) from design to shipping you will loose only around 5K Dollars, much less if you can do small parts inhouse.

 

[karolus]

SBD[/url]":g8cx5l9k]Slow your roll, folks.

Strength isn't a hurdle, nor is precision or rapidity. This really isn't new technology at all, every aerospace firm has had additive capability for a decade plus - the amount of money spent on this technology is truly mind blowing. The problem is finding an application for it outside of prototyping.

You're talking about taking some of the highest quality, most expensive input stock (regular, fine metallic powders of a regular size distribution) and turning it into the crappiest part of an aerospace structure: a weld nugget. Static strength isn't too hard to achieve, but any of your durability and damage tolerance properties are a mess for something that you want to fly more than once (or even survive a violent single flight). Which brings to light other issue... if you have a part that you don't care about (missile casings come to mind), you're usually making them at high enough rate that a set of hard tooling for forgings or whatever is an order of magnitude cheaper than additive manufacturing. If you're making something that flies once that you do care about, like a rocket motor, the cost per pound of weight on the vehicle makes flying around sub-par material not worth the cost savings on the production end for the weight hit you take on the back end.

Don't get me wrong, enabling prototyping like this is awesome, and exactly why this technology is valuable, but there is still A LOT of work before it becomes common to make production runs of components for new designs.

It sounds like the path of most emerging technologies. Still not ready for prime time, but when it is, will probably reshape entire industries.

 

[Owl Saver]

FrankM[/url]":3dktbbcn]

Pokrface[/url]":3dktbbcn]

InflictStrain[/url]":3dktbbcn]A very clever workaround to the issue of a shrinking budget. That the part (and process) work so well is simply amazing. I thought printing a working firearm was challenging enough, but a rocket part capable of withstanding 20,000 pounds of thrust? Mind blowing.

Well, they're laser-forming metal objects from metal powder—copper, aluminum, titanium, and steel. Strength isn't the issue. The technical hurdle is the precision and rapidity with which the parts can be formed.

It's not immediately obvious that laser-sintered powder is as strong as a machined block of the same material... though this test obviously proves it's strong enough.

copper and steel make some sense to me. But aluminum and titanium would seem to be difficult to work with. My guess is that this part has to be primarily titanium. Are there any articles on DMLS and the challenges of the various metals?