Posted on 09/10/2001 1:40:37 PM PDT by LibWhacker
Stratasys: Rapid Manufacturing On Earth Today: in Space Tomorrow?
Rapid prototyping technologies may one day be central to long term space operations where spare parts could be millions of miles away
Minneapolis - Sept. 7, 2001
A Stratasys customer brought the future one step closer with a recent rapid manufacturing application. When a belt-sander-pulley failure halted production in the customer's finishing area, the company rapid manufactured a replacement unit from polycarbonate on a Stratasys FDM Titan(TM) prototyping system. Instead of waiting days for an aluminum replacement part, the company designed and built its own replacement in under four hours.
"I had a model of the pulley drawn up in CAD (computer aided design) in less than an hour," says Kirk Moswen, the manufacturer's fabrication manager. "Then we built the part from polycarbonate on the Titan rapid prototyping system; It took only 2 or 3 hours to build it.
"Although we have many sanders throughout the shop, most of them are continuously used. I didn't have to make the decision to pull a sander away from a less-critical production line. I was able to keep right on going. It's been a month now and the belt sander is still going strong."
This application is probably the first in which a rapid manufacturing process produced an actual replacement part on-the-spot for working production equipment.
The event occurred at one of the several customer beta-test sites commissioned by Stratasys to help fine-tune the Titan before its release. The beta site chose to remain unnamed.
While a humble pulley helps usher in an era of rapid manufacturing on earth, NASA engineers hope to use rapid manufacturing on a grander scale -- on the International Space Station or in space travel.
Astronauts can't carry every spare part they might need, so the space administration may eventually use rapid prototyping systems to manufacturer parts in space. NASA has experimented with Stratasys rapid prototyping systems with good results.
A white paper describing the results is available on the Stratasys Web site. During the experiments last year, NASA engineers placed a Stratasys FDM (fused deposition modeling) system onboard a special aircraft, the KC-135, which produces reduced gravity conditions.
Engineers successfully fabricated various test parts at that time, and they plan to fly the system on a space shuttle flight for further experimentation. The white paper was originally published by NASA Tech Briefs and is available on the Stratasys home page at http://www.stratasys.com/.
Stratasys, Inc., Minneapolis, is a leader in rapid prototyping systems. The Company's patented fused deposition modeling (FDM) process creates solid models directly from 3D CAD files using polycarbonate, ABS plastic, wax, or other materials. Stratasys provides rapid prototyping systems for OEMs such as aerospace, automotive, consumer, and medical product makers.
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