Additive Flight Solutions Awarded AS9100D Certification for Commercial Aircraft 3D Printing

With increasingly stringent standards and regulations governing the aircraft industry, MRO providers must obtain the latest certifications in order to serve their customers, as well as to ensure compliance within their organizations and supply chains. The AS9100 certification standard governs quality management systems in the aerospace industry, and its latest revision AS9100D, updated or changed more than 98% of the previous standard. The revision had broad implications for MRO providers, and introduced a particularly strong focus on accountability, to ensure strict safety protocols and to introduce preventive risk-based thinking, and measures to prevent the use of counterfeit products.

Image courtesy of Additive Flight Solutions.

In a boost to the Singapore-based company’s growing reputation as a provider of additive manufacturing part solutions for aerospace maintenance, repair and overhaul (MRO), Additive Flight Solutions (AFS) has received the AS9100D Certification. It is also now registered with the International Aerospace Quality Group (IAQG), the global body that governs quality management within the worldwide supply chain of the aerospace industry.

This is all the more relevant as additive manufacturing solutions, such as those from AFS, increasingly transform or complement the traditional MRO business in providing parts and services that meet the quality requirements for end-use in aircrafts. A joint venture between major Asia-Pacific MRO provider, SIA Engineering Company (SIAEC), and Stratasys, AFS brings Stratasys’ additive manufacturing expertise and solutions to more than 80 international carriers and aerospace OEMs through SIAEC. AFS provides AM solutions for aerospace certification (such as the Aircraft Interiors Certification Solution), prototyping, manufacturing aids and tooling, and production parts using thermoplastics.

Composite Tooling. Image courtesy of Additive Flight Solutions

In particular, it supplies industry grade parts and services for airplane cabin interiors (sanitizer holders for example) to local and global manufacturers. The AM parts are primarily used as replacements for interior cabin parts, which are low volume, and can often be obsolescent. Regarding the certification, Stefan Roeding, DGM, AFS said,

“From individual part weight reduction to a more comfortable layout and design, the future of aircraft interiors is set to take off in innovative ways. Apart from being a competitive advantage, achieving the AS9100D is a significant milestone for AFS and our parent companies. This certification validates our commitment to drive the development of aerospace applications and deliver reliable and precisely engineered solutions. It gives us immense pride in attaining this globally recognized mark of excellence.”

With the AS9100D certification for an AM part provider, aerospace manufacturers can enable partnerships and strengthen confidence in collaborating with AFS to advance next-generation aerospace MRO solutions. AM parts have proven their improved material properties, to deliver better performance, efficiency and flexibility in aerospace manufacturing, design, and supply chains. These parts must also meet requirements from international organizations such as the European Union Aviation Safety Agency (EASA).

                                                                                                                Image courtesy of Additive Flight Solutions

In other partnerships to advance AM in aerospace MRO, Oerlikon is working jointly with Lufthansa Technik to accelerate AM in MRO applications, EOS is doing the same with Etihad Airways Engineering for cabin parts, and so is Pratt & Whitney working with ST Engineering for aero-engine components. Similarly, Air New Zealand is working with Arcam EBM to produce metal AM parts for aircraft interiors, MRO tooling and product development. Premium Aerotec and Materialise have partnered with Airbus to supply metal and polymer parts respectively. Stratasys has also partnered with Marshall Aerospace and Defense Group to 3D print flight-ready parts as well as ground-running equipment.

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U.S. Air Force & GE Collaborate in Parts Certification, 3D Print F110 Sump Cover

A collaboration that began last year between GE Additive and GE Aviation and the U.S. Air Force is now coming to fruition. As the U.S. Air Force sought help with creating a metal additive airworthiness and certification path, beginning mid-2019, they received a proposal from GE offering a streamlined plan for readiness, affordability, and sustainment in an AM program.

With some aircraft reaching 60 years of service for the military, the U.S. Air Force’s Rapid Sustainment Office (RSO) began considering better ways to perform maintenance and manufacture spare parts. As the GE team reached out to the ROS, they realized that GE had the experience in qualifying and certifying AM parts that they required.

“The RSO is excited to partner with GE Additive and its efforts to deliver additively manufactured parts for the Air Force,” said Nathan Parker, deputy program executive officer for the RSO who oversees and provides funding for the project with GE. “Their successes will help ensure our systems rapidly obtain the high-quality parts they need to stay flying and at the ready.”

Additively manufactured, cobalt-chrome sump cover for F110 engine. (Photo: GE Additive, GEADPR035)

As continued proponents of 3D printing and additive manufacturing processes—for years, before most people were even aware of such technology—both GE Additive and a variety of different military divisions have continued to innovate, expanding AM facilities around the world, developing new materials, and creating new parts for U.S. Air Force planes and even runways. In this partnership, the two organizations have developed a multi-phased program that ascends in both complexity and scale as each phase is completed.

“The Air Force wanted to go fast from day one and gain the capability and capacity for metal additive manufacturing, as rapidly as possible, to improve readiness and sustainability,” explains Lisa Coroa-Bockley, general manager for advanced materials solutions at GE Aviation.

“Speed is additive’s currency, and by applying our additive experiences with the LEAP fuel nozzle and other parts additively printed for the GE9X, being able to offer an end-to-end solution and also applying lessons learned of a robust certification processes, we’ve been able to accelerate the pace for the USAF,” added Coroa-Bockley.

The program, based on a spiral development model, begins with basic part identification and then moves forward to part consolidation and certifying more complicated systems like common core heat exchangers.

“The collaborative effort between the US Air Force and GE shows great promise toward the adoption of metal 3D printed parts as an option to solve the US Air Force’s current and future sustainment challenges. This capability provides an alternate method to source parts for legacy propulsion systems throughout their life cycle, especially when faced with a diminishing supplier base or when infrequent demands or low volume orders are not attractive to traditional manufacturers,” said Colonel Benjamin Boehm, director, AFLCMC/LP Propulsion Directorate.

So far, the collaborative team has completed Phase 1, identifying GE Aviation spare parts for the F110 and TF34 engines, and then evaluating and proving their readiness for flight. Work had already been started on a sump cover (in use already for F-15 and F-16 aircraft) for the General Electric F110 engine, and it became the focal point of the first phase in the program.

Phase 1b, in the planning stages, will reflect continued complexity in the stages, as the team works on a sump cover housing. This is a ‘family of parts’ currently found on the TF34 engine—part of an aircraft that has been in use for over four decades.

“Re-engineering legacy parts and additively manufacturing low quantities of traditionally cast parts has incredible potential to improve USAF supportability. It’s worth our focus to develop a fast, highly repeatable process,” said Melanie Jonason, chief engineer for the propulsion sustainment division at Tinker Air Force Base (AFB).

Excited about the project from the beginning, Jonason is working with the GE Aviation military team, the chief engineer, Dr. Matt Szolwinski, James Bonar, and a team of GE Additive engineers.

“Compared to other parts on the F110 engine, the sump cover might have lower functionality, but is incredibly important. It needs to be durable, form a seal and it needs to work for the entire engine to function – which is of course critical on a single engine aircraft like the F-16,” said James Bonar, engineering manager at GE Additive.

GE Additive and GE Aviation have worked together closely in designing the aluminum sump cover—with the first builds produced on GE Additive Concept Laser M2 machines running cobalt-chrome at their Additive Technology Center (ATC) in Cincinnati.

Beth Dittmer

“The program with GE is ahead of schedule and the preliminary work already done on the sump cover has allowed us to move forward quickly. As we build our metal additive airworthiness plan for the Air Force, the completion of each phase represents a significant milestone as we take a step closer to getting an additive part qualified to fly in one of our aircraft,” said Beth Dittmer, division chief, propulsion integration at Tinker AFB.

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GE Aviation F110 engine.

[Source / Images: Source / Images: GE Additive]

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Titomic Signs Agreement with Airbus to Make 3D Printed Metal Demonstrator Parts

Global aerospace leader Airbus develops, creates, and delivers innovative solutions in the commercial aircraft, defense, helicopter, space, and security sectors, and has long been a champion of using additive manufacturing to do so. Airbus installed its first 3D printer back in 2012, and used its first metal 3D printed part – a titanium bracket – in one of its commercial jetliners just two years later. Now, over 1,000 3D printed parts are used in its A350 XWB aircraft.

In order to deliver 3D printed aerospace solutions, the European aircraft manufacturing giant has partnered up with many big names in the industry, from Local Motors and Materialise to Premium AEROTEC and GE Aviation, and just today announced a new collaboration. Australian large-scale, industrial AM company Titomic has just reached a major agreement with Airbus, which will use the Melbourne company’s patented Titomic Kinetic Fusion (TKF) technology to demonstrate high-performance metal parts.

“We are pleased to partner with Airbus for this initial aerospace part made with Titomic Kinetic Fusion® (TKF), the world’s largest and fastest industrial-scale metal additive manufacturing process,” stated Titomic CEO Jeff Lang in a press release. “The TKF process ideally suited to produce near-net shape metal parts for the aerospace industry using our patented process of fusing dissimilar metals that cannot be produced with either traditional fabrication methods or metal-based 3D printers.”

TKF is the result of a Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO) study, when Australia’s government was looking to capitalize on its titanium resources. Titomic’s proprietary TKF technology platform uses a process similar to cold spray, and has no limits in terms of build shape and size. A 6-axis robot arm sprays titanium powder particles, at supersonic speeds, onto a scaffold in order to build up complex parts layer by layer.

Thanks to its unique AM technology, Titomic can provide its customers with production run capabilities, which helps rapidly create excellent products, with decreased material waste, that have lower production inputs.

“3D printing, of which TFK is the leading technology, has the potential to be a game changer post the global COVID-19 pandemic supply chain disruption as aircraft manufacturers look to reduce production costs, increase performance, improve supply chain flexibility and reduce inventory costs, and TKF, co-developed with the CSIRO, can be an integral part of this change,” said Lang.

“Regulations force aerospace manufacturers to provide spare parts for long periods after the sale of an aircraft, so it’s not rocket science to assume they will be early adopters of 3D printing solutions for spare-part management.”

The Titomic Kinetic Fusion process involves a 6-axis robot arm spraying titanium powder particles onto a scaffold at supersonic speeds.

TKF technology could be crucially important for aircraft manufacturers, like Airbus, as the field of aviation is one of the largest customers of titanium alloy products. That’s why Titomic has invested in further developing AM so it can meet the material, process, and design qualification system that’s required by the European Aviation Safety Agency (EASA) and the US Federal Aviation Administration (FAA). The company will work to develop TKF 3D printing material properties and parts process parameters for Airbus.

This agreement, the future delivery of the 3D printed demonstrator parts to Airbus, and a technology review process of said parts, all validate the certification process that Titomic’s government-funded IMCRC research project, with partners RMIT and CSIRO, is currently undergoing.

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Tethers Unlimited Recycler and 3D Printer Refabricator Operational on Board the ISS

Soace manufacturing start-up Tethers Unlimited has had a tumultuous time of late. The firm which aims to develop in space manufacturing technologies and has successfully seen its Refabricator put in use on board the ISS space station now. The recycler has been installed and is now being put to use by astronaut Anne McClaine. At the same time, Tethers has had to lay off a fifth of its staff due to cash flow problems stemming from the government shutdown in the US.

Astronaut Anne McClain installing the Tethers unlimited FDM 3D printer and recycling unit on board the ISS. She appears to be wearing a rugby shirt which would be fitting since she participated in the rugby world cup as well as being a helicopter pilot with 216 missions in Iraq, engineer, a mom and an aerospace engineer.

Tethers as a firm has always been a bit of a wild ride. The company started in 1994 looking to commercialize space tethers. Tethers in space are long (tensile) cables that can be tied to satellites and other space vehicles. Long dreamt about rarely used successfully the idea is that a long tether tied to a satellite could be used for propulsion or power generation in space. An Electrodynamic tether, for example, conducts and by passing through a planet’s magnetic field. This kind of tether can use the Lorentz force (electromagnetic force) of an electrified tether against the magnetic field of a planet to push the spacecraft into a new orbit. This would save on fuel and perhaps let craft slingshot around planets more efficiently. Momentum exchange tethers may actually let the spacecraft slingshot itself into space through spinning. A bolo of a tether tied to a craft may be used to spin and propel other craft onward in their journey.

Marko Baricevic of Tethers Unlimited testing the Refabricator

Skyhooks would do the same but at much higher speeds. A space elevator is a tether tied to a craft in geosynchronous orbit above 35,000 KM in altitude which could be used to life payloads potentially inexpensively (once you build the most expensive thing ever which is also the biggest thing ever and also would need advances in material science to even be remotely feasible). Meanwhile, several 20 kilometer long tethers could together form an electric solar wind sail propelled by an electron gun shooting at these tethers to keep them in high potential while the craft spins giving the extended tethers centrifugal force and letting them stay extended enough for them to harvest force from solar wind plasma. Tethers could also be used to generate power. Tethers are amazing dream mayonnaise for making any insane space idea  palatable. Tether dreams are way beyond Elon Musk’s comparatively quotidian dreams of cities of Mars and reusable rockets without Elon’s magical capital sourcing ability and media presence.

A momentum exchange tether courtesy of Tethers Unlimited

So for Tethers, the firm, going since 1994 a 3D printer and recycler onboard ISS may seem like a bit of a climb down and limited technical challenge compared to what they want to be doing. Nonetheless, for us, it is a great leap. If we conceive of astronauts spending many years in space and journeying through the solar system we know now that many unforeseen things will go wrong. Accidents will happen and valves not opening properly and nonfunctional O rings have killed astronauts. Just a few years ago a design flaw nearly caused an Italian astronaut to drown in space. If we extend our proposed space journeys to years then we know things we will not have foreseen will go wrong beyond any imaginary tolerance for failure that we can engineer away through redundancy. The perfect spacecraft may exist on the platform but it will not exist underway.

In essence, we need a magic satchel with stuff that could repair all the things in ways that we could not imagine them breaking. A combination of a 3D printer and a recycler is that magic satchel. A recycling unit can take food packaging, waste and things no longer need it and turn it into 3D printer filament which then can be printed into solutions for problems. Nonworking solutions can be recycled into iterations of better ones and all of those failures and the winner can be recycled into future solutions waiting to happen. We commonly refer to those as 3D printer filament. A spool of filament is really a seem of ideas not made yet or a roll of problems unsolved. The reason I love 3D printing and am completely obsessed with it is this idea of a recycler and 3D printer combo remaking our world forever letting us consumer while we reuse so please excuse the much more than efficient stream of words. NASA itself says that 95% of spare parts in space will never be used but they don’t know which 95% and that on the 13 tonne ISS they predict 450 Kilograms of failures each year. This in itself makes for a very compelling case for 3D printing spares.

Graphical representation of ISS logistics.

Tethers has now made an Express rack compatible recycler that is being used on board the ISS as we speak. The Refabricators objective is to,

“The Refabricator demonstrates a unique process for repeatable, closed-loop recycling plastic materials for additive manufacturing in the microgravity environment of the ISS a minimum of seven times. Samples consisting of sections of filament and standardized material testing specimens are collected from each cycle in order to quantify any degradation of material that occurs during the recycling and printing process, and enhance the understanding of the recycling process in space.”

The Refabricator

This would be quite the polymer 3D printing challenge here on earth but at least NASA is being realistic on the number of recycling cycles and material degradation of plastics which a lot of people don’t seem to know. The Refabricator is meant to show,

“Integrated recycling/3D printing capability thus provides significant cost savings by reducing the launch mass and volume required for printer feedstock while decreasing Earth reliance.”

Tethers CEO Rob Hoyt said,

“It will provide future astronauts the ability to manufacture tools, replacement parts, utensils and medical implements when they need them, and greatly reduce the logistics costs for manned space missions by reusing waste materials and minimizing the amount of replacement parts that must be launched from Earth,”

The printer was made for $2.5 million so that’s a good amount to spend on engineering a printer that works well in space and can also recycle. Tethers has additional expertise via a $10 million FabLab project to make a fab lab in space but this is separate from Made In Space‘s own 3D printer initiative. Tethers Refabricator is meant to recycle ABS and they will do it through a process that they’ve called positrusion.

As well the Positrusion effort by Tethers NASA is also developing the CRISSP both as apart of NASA’s ISP (In Space Manufacturing) program. CRISSP is focused on recycling packaging but is also being carried out by Tethers while Cornerstone Research Group is doing a similar effort (but with creating reversible copolymers that can take antistatic bags and turn them into parts) and Resonetics has been tasked with making a sensor and monitoring package. Meanwhile Made in Space is working on its printer and 3D printed metal printing for NASA. Ultratech Machinery (with ultrasonic 3D printing), Techshot and Tethers again are also working on metal parts. With Tethers opting to use its Positrusion system for metals and then combine it with a robot arm and CNC. In metals Techshot wants to use low powered lasers with metal wire in its SIMPLE technology (which is far from it). Techshot’s SIMPLE will use an induction coil around an FDM nozzle to extrude a metal filament which is then sintered by a low power laser.  Techshot itself is also working on recycling and separately biofabrication. whats better than astronauts? 3D printed astronauts. Weirdly GE isn’t apparently working for NASA on metal even though its EBM process has been evaluated thoroughly by NASA. Tethers is also working on medical printing in space while the Marshall Space Flight Center itself is trying to print electronics and circuits. NASA also has efforts underway to print structures in space outside of the vehicle which Made in Space, Loral, Orbital ATK and Tethers are working on. NASA also 3D printing structures on MARS so Elon has a place to live. This MARS effort has a contest element as well as a cooperation with the US Army Corps of Engineers here on earth with the ACES initiative which we’ve covered extensively. Additionally, NASA is printing engines and more parts for space systems themselves.

Positrusion is a new filament extrusion technology that Tethers came up with specifically for space based recycling. The system can acceptmiscellaneous ABS parts, it will dry and degas the input material before melting and extruding it through a die, and the cross-sectional dimensions and feed-rate of the cooling extrudate will be tightly controlled in a continuous analog of closed-die molding.”  

NASA diagram of the Positrusion recycling system

In closed die molding, material is injected into a closed cold mold at high velocity while degassing removes material and creates voids that must be filled while the build material is often quickly cooled. If the Refabricator can control the gas removal and make the filament free of voids while at the same time making sure that there is no bubbling on the surface then they could have a very small form factor recycling process. Tight control of that process could give them high-quality polymer parts as well. If they could tightly collapse the system they make have a really amazing nozzle based print head that can dose and deposit accurately at one point in the future.

Dr. Allison Porter Missions Manager at Tethers Unlimited with the Refabricator

As well as ABS the system is being tested for use with Ultem 9085 this SABIC material is a UL 94-V0 rated low flame, toxicity and smoke high-performance polymer which you can here on earth get on your Stratasys system and is used widely in aerospace. For space use the Ultem would be significantly safer than ABS and a better bet going forward I should hope. Would this mean that NASA would be inclined to increase its use as build material across the space craft or in other material applications? Ultem Tang packaging anyone?

Developments as the Refabricator would seem to be absolutely essential for the future of space exploration and travel. By recycling what is on board and what is no longer used astronauts could develop solutions for many of the problems that they can encounter and extend the life of the craft that they are traveling on. Here on earth, refabricator-like devices could extend all of the things that surround us. What do you think will homes see refabricators or will this just be a tool for spacefarers? In the meantime here on Earth Tethers has just shed some very experienced people and is hoping to avoid another shutdown, a rather humdrum problem for a company that wishes to conquer the stars.

Top 10 3D Printing Aerospace Stories from 2018

3D printing has played an important role in many industries over the past year, such as medical, education, and aerospace. It would take a very long time to list all of the amazing news in aerospace 3D printing in 2018, which is why we’ve chosen our top 10 stories for you about 3D printing in the aerospace industry and put them all in a single article.

Sintavia Received Approval to 3D Print Production Parts for Honeywell Aerospace

Tier One metal 3D printer manufacturer Sintavia LLC, headquartered in Florida, announced in January that it is the first company to receive internal approval to 3D print flightworthy production parts, using a powder bed fusion process, for OEM Honeywell Aerospace. Sintavia’s exciting approval covers all of Honeywell’s programs.

Boeing and Oerlikon Developing Standard Processes

Boeing, the world’s largest aerospace company, signed a five-year collaboration agreement with Swiss technology and engineering group Oerlikon to develop standard processes and materials for metal 3D printing. Together, the two companies will use the data resulting from their agreement to support the creation of standard titanium 3D printing processes, in addition to the qualification of AM suppliers that will produce metallic components through a variety of different materials and machines. Their research will focus first on industrializing titanium powder bed fusion, as well as making sure that any parts made with the process will meet the necessary flight requirements of both the FAA and the Department of Defense.

FITNIK Launched Operations in Russia

In 2017, FIT AG, a German provider of rapid prototyping and additive design and manufacturing (ADM) services, began working with Russian research and engineering company NIK Ltd. to open up the country’s market for aerospace additive manufacturing. FIT and NIK started a new joint venture company, dubbed FITNIK, which combines the best of what both companies offer. In the winter of 2018, FITNIK finally launched its operations in the strategic location of Zhukovsky, which is an important aircraft R&D center.

New Polymer 3D Printing Standards for Aerospace Industry

The National Institute for Aviation Research (NIAR) at Wichita State University (WSU), which is the country’s largest university aviation R&D institution, announced that it would be helping to create new technical standard documents for polymer 3D printing in the aerospace industry, together with the Polymer Additive Manufacturing (AMS AM-P) Subcommittee of global engineering organization SAE International. These new technical standard documents are supporting the industry’s interest in qualifying 3D printed polymer parts, as well as providing quality assurance provisions and technical requirements for the material feedstock characterization and FDM process that will be used to 3D print high-quality aerospace parts with Stratasys ULTEM 9085 and ULTEM 1010.

Premium AEROTEC Acquired APWORKS

Metal 3D printing expert and Airbus subsidiary APWORKS announced in April that it had been acquired as a subsidiary by aerostructures supplier Premium AEROTEC. Premium AEROTEC will be the sole shareholder, with APWORKS maintaining its own market presence as an independent company. Combining the two companies gave clients access to 11 production units and a wide variety of materials.

Gefertec’s Wire-Feed 3D Printing Developed for Aerospace

Gefertec, which uses wire as the feedstock for its patented 3DMP technology, worked with the Bremer Institut für Angewandte Strahltechnik GmbH (BIAS) to qualify its wire-feed 3D printing method to produce large structural aerospace components. The research took place as part of collaborative project REGIS, which includes several different partners from the aerospace industry, other research institutions, and machine manufacturers. Germany’s Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Energy funded the project, which investigated the influence of shielding gas content and heat input on the mechanical properties of titanium and aluminium components.

Research Into Embedded QR Codes for Aerospace 3D Printing

It’s been predicted that by 2021, 75% of new commercial and military aircraft will contain 3D printed parts, so it’s vitally important to find a way to ensure that 3D printed components are genuine, and not counterfeit. A group of researchers from the NYU Tandon School of Engineering came up with a way to protect part integrity by converting QR codes, bar codes, and other passive tags into 3D features that are hidden inside 3D printed objects. The researchers explained in a paper how they were able to embed the codes in a way that they would neither compromise the integrity of the 3D printed object or be obvious to any counterfeiters attempting to reverse engineer the part.

Lockheed Martin Received Contract for Developing Aerospace 3D Printing

Aerospace company Lockheed Martin, the world’s largest defense contractor, was granted a $5.8 million contract with the Office of Naval Research to help further develop 3D printing for the aerospace industry. Together, the two will investigate the use of artificial intelligence in training robots to independently oversee the 3D printing of complex aerospace components.

BeAM And PFW Aerospace Qualified 3D Printed Aerospace Component

BeAM, well-known for its Directed Energy Deposition (DED) technology, announced a new partnership with German company PFW Aerospace, which supplies systems and components for all civilian Airbus models and the Boeing 737 Dreamliner. Together, the two worked to qualify a 3D printed aerospace component, made out of the Ti6Al4V alloy, for a large civil passenger aircraft, in addition to industrializing BeAM’s DED process to manufacture series components and testing the applicability of the method to machined titanium components and complex welding designs.

Researchers Qualified 3D Printed Aerospace Brackets

Speaking of parts qualification, a team of researchers completed a feasibility study of the Thermoelastic Stress Analysis (TSA) on a titanium alloy space bracket made with Electron Beam Melting (EBM) 3D printing, in order to ensure that its mechanical behavior and other qualities were acceptable. The researchers developed a methodology, which was implemented on a titanium based-alloy satellite bracket.

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Relativity Space 3D Prints 11-Foot-Tall Fuel Tank with Stargate 3D Printer

Relativity Space is not alone in wanting to 3D print rockets – there are plenty of companies with the goal of doing just that. What makes Relativity stand out, however, is that it has the means to 3D print entire rockets with almost no intervention from humans. The company’s massive Stargate 3D printer utilizes 18-foot-tall robotic arms equipped with lasers that can melt metal wire. Those robotic arms have the ability to stream about eight inches’ worth of metal onto a large turntable in just a second’s time. Directed by custom software, the robotic arms are capable of producing the entire body of the rocket in one piece.

Using a giant 3D printer allows Relativity Space to reduce the part count of a typical rocket from 100,000 to 1,000. This, needless to say, greatly saves on time, labor and money, which in turn saves customers millions of dollars per launch. Relativity intends for its rockets to carry large payloads, too, up to the size of a small car, which is six times the capability of its competitors, according to the company.

Relativity is a young company, founded in 2015, and just this year completed its Series B funding. It has already accomplished a great deal with the Stargate 3D printer, however, and its latest milestone was the 3D printing of an 11-foot-tall aluminum fuel tank. The 3D printer worked for three weeks to complete the tank, which will next be taken to NASA’s Stennis Space Center in Mississippi. Relativity Space signed an agreement with NASA for exclusive use of Stennis Space Center’s 25-acre E4 Test Complex. The facility also includes four large test cells rated for entire vehicles and engines and 15,000 square feet of specialized infrastructure. Relativity is investing its own capital to build upon the existing site, and is creating a permanent team to lead testing operations.

The agreement between Relativity and Stennis Space Center is Stennis’ first ever and will be in place for 20 years. Relativity Space will use the site to carry out complete development, qualification and acceptance testing of the Terran 1 rocket, a launch vehicle designed from scratch for constellation deployment and resupply. According to Relativity, the rocket will be one of the most cost-effective launch vehicles in the world.

Over the next year or two, Relativity Space plans to spend its time working on the development of the Terran 1’s first stage. The company is aiming for late 2020 or early 2021 for its first commercial launch. Long-term goals are a bit more out there – Relativity wants to build the first rocket on Mars. But with all the serious talk of going to Mars lately and the continued development of plans for building settlements on the Red Planet, Relativity’s goals may not be so far-out after all.

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[Images: Relativity Space]

 

Researchers Qualify 3D Printed Aerospace Brackets and use Thermoelastic Stress Analysis for Testing

3D printed aerospace brackets made from titanium alloys are becoming more common in the design of spacecraft and satellites. Any aerospace component, however, cannot just be 3D printed and stuck onto the spacecraft – it must be tested and qualified to make sure that its mechanical behavior, among other qualities, is acceptable. In a study entitled “Non-Contact Measurement Techniques for Qualification of Aerospace Brackets Made by Additive Manufacturing Technologies,” a team of researchers undertakes a feasibility study of the Thermoelastic Stress Analysis (TSA) on a titanium alloy space bracket made by Electron Beam Melting.

The researchers developed a methodology that they implemented on a titatium based-alloy satellite bracket. They first designed a test bench for TSA. In order to define possible deviations between the expected and actual mechanical behavior, they compared TSA results with a Finite Element Analysis evaluated on the CAD model.

“We focused our attention on the regions where the evaluated FEM predicts higher stress concentrations, i.e. the curvatures near the rigid body constraint (see figure 3), and we observed them both from the outer side and from the inner one,” the researchers state. “…In figure 4 (a), the stress localization is in accordance with the predicted one, confirming the feasibility of TSA investigation for the examined component. On the other side, figure 4(b) shows another result in accordance with the physics of the problem: the upper and the lower curvatures work oppositely in terms of stress: when the ones are stretched, the others are compressed and vice-versa.”

They extracted significant interrogation lines in order to gain more sensitivity about the stress trends.

“Therefore, it is remarkable that the stress trend relative to the FEM analysis conducted on the CAD model (figure 5(b)) is much smoother than the trends in the actual component,” the researchers continue. “This is an unexpected datum, since it generally happens the opposite due to the fact that a small amount of heat exchange always occurs during a Thermoelastic test, smoothing the curves, and providing a small loss of resolution. On the contrary, our test campaign reveals that the particular micro/macro structure and the surface roughness provided by the Additive Manufacturing process, lead to localized stress peaks, not predictable a-priori.”

The results of the analysis showed the same trends at larger scales, but smaller unexpected peaks in the TSA data and in the evaluated FEM, due to the particular micro and macro conformation given by the 3D printing process.

“Hence, our measurement technique, in conjunction with usual morphological and dimensional investigation, could make available a more complete Non- Destructive qualification process for AM made aerospace brackets, giving information about the effective mechanical behavior of these structures,” the researchers conclude.

Authors of the paper include G. Allevi, M. Cibeca, R. Fioretti, R. Marsili, R. Montanini and G. Rossi.

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