The European Space Agency has funded a study project on the feasibility of 3D printing parts on the Moon, using recycled metal from spacecraft, landers and other rovers.
Whether it is the Moon or, more distantly, Mars, the maintenance of a lasting human presence will necessarily involve the exploitation of natural resources. in situ and the recycling of those carried by the astronauts. For this, it will be necessary to use various extraction technologies to produce the water and oxygen essential to astronauts and their rockets, or to transform the lunar soil (regolith) into construction material to build habitats. For example, recently, a NASA team announced that they succeeded in extracting oxygen from simulated lunar soil in a vacuum chamber.
3D printing by photopolymerization
It is in this perspective that ESA is exploring the possibility of recycling certain lunar equipment, once their mission is completed, to make a material for the 3D printing of metal parts. Indeed, what will happen to the various spacecraft and equipment (rovers, landers, probes, etc.) when they are no longer operational or if they break down? Being able to reuse them in whole or in part by recycling some of their elements makes total sense.
ESA therefore funded the work of the Austrian company Incus which, in association with Lithoz GmbH and OHB, has developed an additive 3D printing process by photopolymerization using recycled titanium powder. This metal fabrication technique based on lithography (Lithography-based Metal Manufacturing, LMM) combines metal powder with a binding agent, the whole being then hardened by exposure to ultraviolet light, then sintered (passage through an oven).
Dealing with the inevitable Moon dust
The method is not exceptional, since it is commonly used. The real challenge was to take into account the lunar conditions, and in particular the presence of dust which will inevitably cover all the equipment. Highly abrasive and electrostatically charged, Moon dust clings everywhere, and is difficult to get rid of. In other words, cleaning all the recyclable metal parts in place before transforming them for 3D printing is not an option.
Incus therefore worked by integrating different percentages of simulated lunar dust (up to 10%) into a mixture of new and recycled titanium powder. As a result, the highest levels of contamination
increased the viscosity of the material, but the engineers found the
parade by varying the amount of binder. Finally, they obtained a part of the desired quality and whose resistance is, according to the ESA, comparable to that of parts produced by metal injection molding.
” Given the challenge represented by the return of Man to the Moon and the construction of a base, the theme of the use of in situ resources is gaining more and more momentum. Projects like this, recently completed by Incus and its partners, demonstrate that manufacturing methods such as LMM are strong candidates to support such an endeavor. commented Martina Meisnar, technical manager of this project at ESA.
Source : ESA
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