Mitsubishi Develops Technology for 3D Printing in Outer Space

"Made In Space, Redwire, and Bigelow, move over," writes long-time Slashdot reader Dr. Crash. "There's yet another 3D printing in space group — and it's not a startup." Mitsubishi Electric just went public with a UV-sensitive resin specially made to print in zero-G and in a hard vacuum — as in outside the airlock.

The polymer is tuned to harden with solar ultraviolet light, so no UV lasers needed (saving power and launch weight).

Their first goal? Printing cubesat parabolic dishes in orbit, so a 300mm cubesat could have what looks like a one-meter dish antenna — or anything else that can be freeform-printed.
This "photopolymerization" technology "specifically addresses the challenge of equipping small, inexpensive spacecraft buses with large structures, such as high-gain antenna reflectors," according to Mitsubishi's announcement — arguing that it also ultimately "enables on-orbit fabrication of structures that greatly exceed the dimensions of launch vehicle fairings."

Nice!

[marcle]

Let's hope this turns out to be practical. It would be a huge benefit for space exploration.

Re: Nice!

[owndao]

Iâ(TM)d just like to know how large is the printer? Does it require EVAs to assemble it? Hmmm?

Re:

[ClickOnThis]

Let's hope this turns out to be practical. It would be a huge benefit for space exploration.

I hope the solar UV flux in more distant parts of the Solar System is sufficient to harden the polymer.

But

[rossdee]

Whats the shipping cost for the cartridges (or whatever 3D printers use) ?

There's a video too.

[Dr. Crash]

There's a youTube video of it working in a vac chamber:

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]

SLA printer

[sjames]

There are definitely some interesting challenges to zero-G SLA printing. I'm surprised there hasn't been much testing of zero-G FDM (filament) printing. That process seems to be fairly insensitive to gravity to the point that some people mount FDM printers on the wall for simple convenience and it works fine without modification.

printing in a vacuum would require liquid cooling for the tool head since a fan just won't work.

A resin antenna?

[Klaxton]

Good that they are able to print something and I realize it is just a proof-of-concept at this point, but how well does a polymer resin dish work as an antenna? It seems like they would have to subsequently apply an appropriate metallic coating, and do that in zero-G and a hard vacuum as well. Also if you look at the depictions in the article, the printed dish is not at all smooth. It looks corrugated, and that would scatter radio energy.

Aside from that, I am wondering how they manage to cause the part bein

Parity . . .

[Anonymous Crowded]

YES, but does the extruder clog in the SAME way? Does the tip become irrecoverably frail at some random point? Also, in zero gravity, it seems that alignment would be less likely to drift over time. Have they addressed that issue so it's never quite plumb?

coding

[weent18]

While working in the browser shields developers from device-specific issues, the developer [jatapp.com] must design a mobile view that works across different screen resolutions and orientations, which may not be possible unless the app is optimized for each individual device