BASF Ultrafuse® PET CF15 and BASF Ultrafuse® PAHT CF15 are now available for XYZprinting’s PartPro300 xT https://ift.tt/3fkyw6F XYZprinting has evaluated and qualified materials from the globe’s leading companies that enable customers to innovate and achieve growth in the additive manufacturing industry. In response to customer’s professional needs, XYZprinting has orchestrated the best-in-class offerings from a comprehensive partner ecosystems for delivering an integrated portfolio of products, services and solutions. By providing innovative materials, XYZprinting is able to help customers turn technology into a competitive advantage. BASF Ultrafuse® PET CF15Ultrafuse® PET CF15 is a cost-effective material that combines fast processing and low moisture absorption with excellent strength and rigidity. Ultrafuse® PET CF15 is a polyethylene terephthalate strengthened with 15% carbon fiber, which is easier to operate than other carbon fiber reinforced filaments. Users would be capable of 3D printing new modules that can withstand higher mechanical and thermal loads while staying completely functional. Ultrafuse® PET CF15 is a high-performance engineering filament that helps users to optimize new 3D printing applications. This filament is suitable for a wide range of demanding industrial applications due to its superior heat resistance, high strength, and rigidity. It’s an ideal solution for applications in humid operating environments because of its high dimensional stability and low moister uptake. Applications:
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BASF Ultrafuse® PAHT CF15High Temperature PA with 15 % Carbon Fiber Ultrafuse® PAHT CF15 is a high-performance 3D printing filament that extends the reach of FFF printing applications. It can be used with any FFF printer that has a hardened nozzle. It’s also compatible with BVOH, a water-soluble support material, and HIPS, allowing for the printing of complex geometries in the harshest operating conditions. Ultrafuse® PAHT CF15 integrates excellent mechanical resilience with high temperature and chemical resistance. Your printed part will have low shrinkage during printing due to its excellent dimensional stability, ensuring a smooth printing experience. Because of the existence of the fibers, the parts are incredibly strong and rigid. Applications:
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XYZprinting PartPro300 xTThe Professional High Performance FFF Printer with Dual Extrusion and Controlled Heated ChamberXYZprinting is introducing the PartPro300 xT, a larger professional FFF 3D printer with a maximum build size of 295x300x300mm and high performance dual extruder capable of printing with advanced materials like Carbon PLA, Nylon, Metallic, PETG, ABS, TPE, PLA and water soluble support material. High temperature high speed steel nozzles enable advanced material printing with high quality results. The temperature controlled print chamber keeps the printing temperature constant for excellent performance on complex geometries. Advanced auto leveling and calibration ensures high precision accurate parts. The printer can accept two 3kg material rolls significantly extending print duration for larger jobs.
Printing via 3DPrint.com | The Voice of 3D Printing / Additive Manufacturing https://3dprint.com March 29, 2021 at 06:50AM
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Posterzine Issue 67 | Shantell Martin https://ift.tt/31sMHOP Issue 67 of our monthly poster-come-magazine features the work of London-born artist Shantell Martin. With her dreamy lines meandering in a stream of consciousness, Shantell describes drawing as a meditation. However, unlike traditional meditation, she invites viewers to join her and play a role in its meaning. Currently based in New York, projects of note include a 2019 work in which she covered a military chapel in the city in her bold line work, once again turning it into a place of reflection and community. Yet, Shantell’s work is not limited to large scale pieces; she has also worked with various apparel brands and designers including Max Mara, Kelly Wearstler, Adidas, and Puma. Inside this issue we chat with Shantell about feeling like an outsider, having moved across the world twice, and how she is far from done with dreaming. Printing via People of Print https://ift.tt/2DhgcW7 March 29, 2021 at 06:34AM
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Rosie Emerson https://ift.tt/39myDdS Rosie Emerson is an award winning contemporary artist from the UK, working almost exclusively on representing the female form. Rosie’s figures draw reference from archetypes old and new, from Artemis to the modern day super model. Inspired by her love of museums, architecture, theatre, silhouettes, and shrines, she uses dramatic lighting, hand made costumes, set and prop-making, alongside printmaking and painting to create ethereal works on paper. Her subjects range from well known icons, to models, actors, dancers, and friends, which she photographs in her studio. Rosie then uses numerous different print techniques to bring these forms to life on paper. Her screen prints are delicately embellished with bronze powders and more unusual materials including charcoal powder, ash, and sawdust. These textural prints shift the focus of printmaking from precision and replication, to the creation of unique, hand-finished prints. Rosie’s cyanotype works enable her to use UV light from the sun to expose objects and large scale photographic negatives directly on to paper which has been coated with a light sensitive emulsion. Once dried, the works are often hand painted or gilded with gold leaf. She states; “The technique itself has an element of magic about it, it is wonderful to be able to combine painting, collage and photography in this way’’. Her current photopolymer etchings continue to push printmaking in new directions. Rosie’s monochrome portraits are delicately embossed with unusual materials; salt, netting, hair, and cellophane. She also hand builds small theatre maquettes, which play with scale and create ornate surrounds to her subjects. Her artworks almost always echo previous eras, and sometimes other worlds entirely. Career highlights include Artist in Residence at Somerset House, and exhibitions at The Royal West of England Academy Bristol, and The Southbank Centre. A finalist for the Young Masters Prize and shortlisted for the Rise Art Print Award, Rosie was also commissioned by Arts Council England to create a new Guinness World record by producing the world’s largest cyanotype photograph. Her work is widely collected and exhibited both in the UK and internationally. She has been commissioned by brands including Sony, Triumph Underwear, Redbull, P&O Cruises, Toms, and Annoushka Jewellery, working with models Amber le Bon, Daisy Lowe, and singer Eliza Doolittle. Rosie’s artworks have also been featured in Creative Review, Vogue, Harpers Bazaar, Another Magazine, The Financial Times Magazine, and The Sunday Times Style Magazine. www.rosieemerson.co.uk Printing via People of Print https://ift.tt/2DhgcW7 March 29, 2021 at 06:26AM
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3D Printing Webinar and Virtual Event Roundup: March 28, 2021 https://ift.tt/3u25c8U We’ve got another packed week of webinars and virtual events to tell you about, covering topics like 3D modeling, 3D printed maxillofacial implants, product development, and more. Read on for the details! ASTM AM CoE General Personnel Certificate Course As we told you last week, ASTM International’s Additive Manufacturing Center of Excellence (AM CoE) is holding a virtual training course, in eight modules taught over four weeks, that will cover the general concepts of the entire AM process chain. The course runs through April 15th, and attendees will learn how to support the growing AM industry with technical knowledge, as well as earn a General AM Certificate and 3.2 Continuing Education Units (CEUs). The next two modules are on Tuesday, March 30th, at 9 am EST, and Thursday, April 1st, at 8 am EST. The first will last four hours and focus on feedstock, while the second will last five hours and focus on metrology and post-processing.
You can register for the course, as well as find the module schedule and list of presenters, here. TriMech Continues 3D Modeling Discussion Stratasys and SOLIDWORKS reseller TriMech is having another webinar focused on 3D modeling this Tuesday at 10 am EST. In “Next-Gen 3D Modeling: Understanding 3D Creator and xDesign,” TriMech Application Engineers Sawyer Gara and Stephen Choi will teach attendees all about the 3DEXPERIENCE Platform’s cloud-based 3D Creator collaboration tool and its xDesign App, and how they can be used to perform the same kind of parametric modeling from SOLIDWORKS. You’ll also learn how to add important parts, and progress updates, to a team design project from anywhere, and how to “Create on the Cloud” using xDesign.
You can register for the webinar here. 3DHEALS Holding First Central Europe Event On Tuesday the 30th, the 3DHEALS healthcare and technology network, founded in San Francisco by Jenny Chen, M.D. a couple of years ago, is hosting its first online event for Central Europe beginning at 10:30 am EST. The live event, “Best Practices in Central Europe: 3D Printed Maxillofacial Implants,” is free to the public, though on-demand video after the fact is only free for 3DHEALS premium members. The speakers will include some renowned oral and maxillofacial professors and surgeons, as well as some other experts in the field of 3D printed MF implants. Once the event is over, you can head over to the Topia networking platform to keep the conversation going.
You can register for the event here. Shortening the AM Material Qualification Process From 2-3 pm EST on Tuesday the 30th, America Makes is hosting a webinar, titled “Shortening Your Material Qualification Process for Additive Manufacturing,” about the novel design and simulation tool offered by AlphaSTAR that supports difficult thermal modeling at the material and part levels: GENOA 3DP TMg. Attendees will hear how users of this tool can predict material states and address every thermal region of the print process, from heating and melting to solidification/sintering and cooling, as well as how to generate and process thermal and void maps to find which parts of the print are stable, and scale up from just material to a 3D printed part.
You can register for the webinar here. Stratasys & Eventys Talk Product Development Last month, Stratasys announced that AM product launch agency Enventys Partners is using its industrial Origin One 3D printer to fabricate end-use treatment devices for head lice. On Wednesday, March 31st, at 12 pm EST, the two companies are presenting a webinar about the experience, “An Additive First Approach to Product Development of End-Use Parts,” about the experience. TJ Root, a Design and Development Engineer at Enventys Partners, will discuss the different types of applications that can compete with traditional manufacturing costs, as well as how beneficial it can be to both prototype and produce parts on the same 3D printer, and more.
You can register for the webinar here. Live Demonstration of Riven’s Metal Additive Tool At 1 pm EST on the 31st, Riven is holding a live demonstration of how it’s able to speed up new production of 3D printed parts made with metal binder jetting (MBF) and bound metal deposition (BMD) parts, using its visual 3D data and cloud software. “Dare to Compare: Accelerate NPI of Metal Additive Products” will be hosted by the company’s Founder and CTO James Page will discuss how Riven’s “CAD Compare You Can Share” tool for metal AM post-processing can help users save thousands in engineer hours and wasted processing operations, decrease iterations and ship to customers faster, and visualize warp to tune designs and adjust parameters. Registrants will also get a copy of the company’s Engineering Brief, “Solving metal additive manufacturing challenges with 3D scanning and cloud software”
You can register for the webinar here. Additive Manufacturing Coalition Live Zoom Forum The national membership organization Additive Manufacturing Coalition is holding another live Zoom forum on Wednesday, March 31st at 3 pm EST, titled “People, Technology and Quality: A Case Study on How Additive Manufacturing Will Keep the American Heartland Advancing into the Future.” Congressman Randy Feenstra (IA-04), who serves on the Committee on Agriculture, Committee on Budget, and Committee on Science, Space and Technology, will be delivering opening remarks for the webinar. Additional speakers for the AM Coalition’s latest live Zoom forum are the President of Pilgrim Consulting LLC, Dr. William E. Frazier; Dr. Eric Johnson, Materials Engineering Fellow, John Deere; Associate Professor at Ames Laboratory Dr. Martin Thuo; and Dr. Pete Collins, Associate Professor at Iowa State University. You can register for the Zoom forum here. Fireside Chat: Rapid Medical Response to COVID-19 The final virtual event for the week, a virtual fireside chat hosted by SME’s Direct Digital Manufacturing Advisory Team and Medical Additive Manufacturing Advisory Team, will be held on Thursday, April 1st, at 6 pm EST, as part of the organization’s 2021 3D Digital Manufacturing Challenge, “Digital Manufacturing for Rapid Medical Response.” This week’s “Rapid Medical Response to COVID-19 Fireside Chat” will be a panel discussion, full of medical AM experts talking about how their organizations applied 3D printing to help with the pandemic crisis response and address various medical supply issues. After the panel, the DDM Advisory team will discuss the 2021 challenge theme, and answer questions from student teams and faculty.
You can register for the fireside chat here. Do you have news to share about any future webinars or virtual events? Please let us know! Printing via 3DPrint.com | The Voice of 3D Printing / Additive Manufacturing https://3dprint.com March 28, 2021 at 07:44AM 3D Printing News Briefs, March 27, 2021: Sandia, Desktop Metal & Uniformity Labs, Thermwood https://ift.tt/3lXpfm3 In today’s 3D Printing News Briefs, we’re discussing how 3D printed rocks are being used to detect earthquakes, aluminum sintering for binder jet 3D printing, and two pieces of interesting news from Thermwood about its additive manufacturing technology. Using 3D Printed Rocks to Identify Early Signs of Earthquakes Fracking, geothermal energy stimulation, and carbon dioxide sequestration can all lead to earthquakes, and while energy companies check for faults as often as they can, the unexpected can still happen. A team of geoscientists from Sandia National Laboratories wanted to learn how to better understand and detect these kinds of unexpected, energy exploration-triggered earthquakes, but they needed rocks that would fracture the same way each time pressure was applied in order to study the warning signs of fault failures. Unfortunately, natural rocks, even when collected from the same place, can have different layering and mineral orientation, and therefore different weak points. Together with researchers from Purdue University, the Sandia team 3D printed rocks on a ProJet 360 to study how pressure can transfer through pores down to fault lines, and also crushed 3D printed rocks that had specially added weak points to hear how different types of fault failures sound. The resulting sound data was then combined with a machine learning technique called a random forest algorithm to help identify patterns in the data in order to detect signals of possible seismic events. A large-scale computational model of past earthquakes was used to better understand how stress from water injection is transferred to a fault to cause these quakes.
Chang and Yoon are working together to apply and scale up machine learning algorithms to find hidden faults, and determine geologic stress signatures that could predict how intense a triggered earthquake will be. To learn more, check out the papers that were published about various aspects of this research, like stress transfer, here, here, and here. Desktop Metal, Uniformity Labs: Aluminum Powder for Binder Jetting Additive manufacturing companies Desktop Metal (NYSE: DM) and Uniformity Labs have spent several years collaborating to develop a breakthrough aluminum powder that makes it possible to sinter aluminum in binder jetting technology, and now it’s finally here. This new low-cost, raw material is able to print fully dense, sinterable aluminum 6061 that has better yield strength and ultimate tensile strength than wrought aluminum 6061, and it also enables compatibility with water-based binders as well. This is a major improvement over past aluminum sintering techniques: there’s no need now for coating powder particles, mixing in sintering aids, using binders with costly nanoparticles, or adding in other metals, like magnesium, lead, or tin. The two companies will continue working together to qualify their new powder and scale the production for commercial release; then, once the Uniformity 6061 aluminum is fully qualified, it will be exclusively available to use with Desktop Metal’s Production System platform. Quote request Are you looking to buy a 3D printer or 3D scanner? We're here to help. Get free expert advice and quotes from trusted suppliers in your area. Powered by Aniwaa
Thermwood Reveals Thermal Sensor Layer Automation System Because of a patented “Layer Time Control” feature, Thermwood’s Large Scale Additive Manufacturing (LSAM) machines can already print large thermoplastic composite structures, for multiple applications, that are fused almost perfectly. But now the company has introduced a new LSAM technical capability, called the Thermal Sensor Layer Automation System, that makes print temperature control totally automatic, which truly ensures total fusion between the printed layers. When it comes to 3D printing thermoplastics, different polymers have different ideal print temperatures for good fusion, and Thermwood’s new system uses a rotating, non-contact sensor to continuously measure a layer’s temperature right before a new material bead comes out of the nozzle, which means that the printer can automatically adjust the feed spring to get the optimal temperature for layer to layer fusion, which equals better part quality. An advanced algorithm quickly processes data from the sensor to adjust print speed, which means that the CNC program is no longer in charge of the speed of printing: the LSAM control system responds to changes in the print environment automatically and takes care of it. With Thermwood’s new system, the optimal print temperature is now stored with the other parameters in the control for each polymer. So in order to print using a specific material, all you have to do is load the part program, choose your material, and push the “On” button, as the the whole build process is almost completely automated now, without requiring adjustments or input from a human machine operator. Thermwood has retrofits available as well, so existing LSAM customers can upgrade their existing systems to add the new Thermal Sensor Layer Automation System. Speaking of Thermwood, the LSAM manufacturer has another piece of good news to share: its new line of lower-cost LSAM systems, called LSAM Additive Printers, is now available. Its existing systems are often used to fabricate large-scale fully-fused products, like aerospace molds and tooling, from reinforced composite thermoplastic polymers, including high-temperature materials like PEI and PSU, but clients have been requesting a smaller system that includes the features and print quality of Thermwood’s flagship LSAM systems, but at a lower cost. The new LSAM Additive Printers are “print only” machines build around its new 30 mm LSAM print head; for contrast, its normal 40-60 mm print heads weigh over two tons and require powerful servo drives. Thermwood re-engineered the gantry structure of its 5-axis CNC routers to handle the new print head, which, although smaller than the original, is still pretty big. The new LSAM Additive Printers are fixed gantry, moving table designs, with can print parts up to four feet high, and the 30 mm print head is able to print up to 100 lbs of material an hour, at temperatures up to 450°C. It comes in two styles, with the first measuring five feet wide with ten feet of front to back motion, and vice versa for the second one, and the maximum table print weight is 1,000 lbs, though the second style does have an optional dual servo drive, which doubles the weight carrying capability. Other features include an optional enclosure that surrounds the machine, an optional dual hopper dryer for applications that change materials often, and Thermwood’s new Thermal Sensor Layer Automation System is also available on the new LSAM Additive Printers. Printing via 3DPrint.com | The Voice of 3D Printing / Additive Manufacturing https://3dprint.com March 27, 2021 at 07:16AM USPS announces changes to delivery time for Priority Mail Express https://ift.tt/3bxIa3X March 26, 2021 U.S. Postal Service Announces Changes to Delivery Time for Priority Mail Express, and Seeks to Transfer Bound Printed Matter Parcels to the Competitive Product ListWASHINGTON, DC — The United States Postal Service filed notice with the Postal Regulatory Commission (PRC) today seeking to transfer Bound Printed Matter (BPM) Parcels to the Competitive Product list, and simplifying the delivery time for Priority Mail Express (PME). The changes to PME will take effect no earlier than May 23, 2021. The BPM Parcel change will take effect on a date yet to be determined, and is subject to approval by the PRC. Currently, PME has three guaranteed delivery time windows within the 1 – 2 business day service standards: 10:30 a.m. (in select locations, for an extra fee), noon, or 3 p.m. The new single guaranteed delivery time will be 6 p.m. on the committed delivery day, regardless of package origin and destination. The price of using PME as a shipping option will not change. The current price for PME flat rate envelope starts at $26.35. Additional pricing information can be found on our website. BPM parcels contain advertising, promotional, directory or editorial material such as catalogs, books and other printed material, and can weigh up to 15 pounds. The contents must be securely bound by permanent fastening such as staples, spiral binding, glue, or stitching. The Postal Service has requested that the PRC change the classification of BPM parcels from a Market Dominant product to a Competitive product. By transferring these parcels to the Competitive Product list, the Postal Service will have a greater opportunity to utilize product and pricing strategies to be market responsive and better aligned with the Postal Service’s shipping product portfolio. Bound Printed Matter flats — generally catalogs up to three-quarters of an inch thick and weighing more than one pound — will remain as a Market Dominant product. The PRC will review the changes before they are scheduled to take effect. The complete Postal Service filings can be found on the PRC site under the Daily Listings section at prc.gov/dockets/daily. The Postal Service receives no tax dollars for operating expenses and relies on the sale of postage, products and services to fund its operations. ### Printing via USPS News https://ift.tt/2hH9aDC March 26, 2021 at 12:23PM Diversity Type Project | Call for Submissions https://ift.tt/3fi70Xu We’re excited to partner with Distillery on the Diversity Type Project. This is a unique opportunity to bring our differences together to create a brand new typeface that celebrates diversity and inclusion. With contributions coming from all corners of the world, we’ll be bringing together letters and numbers from the Latin alphabet inspired by 100’s of individual stories and experiences. We will then combine the best submissions into a downloadable typeface that will be available for everyone and anyone to use. No matter your skill set, anyone can apply! We encourage you to join us by contributing a character design inspired by your own personal story, background, or life choices. And if design isn’t for you, you can also get involved by helping us to name the typeface with a great story or word that is meaningful to you. What’s more, with an embedded ‘download to donate’ mechanic, we’ll also be raising money to help charities and organisations that help champion diversity around the world. Brief: Design a single letter or series of letters from the English alphabet responding to what the word diversity means to you. Submissions close on Sunday 18th April 2021. Printing via People of Print https://ift.tt/2DhgcW7 March 26, 2021 at 11:58AM SpaceX Successes Drive off-Earth Innovation, So Do Its Failures https://ift.tt/3lTvJCA After a highly anticipated test launch, SpaceX’s Starship’s SN11 prototype finally passed every test as planned. Reaching an altitude of approximately 10 kilometers at (hora) on a foggy afternoon on March 26, 2021, the fully reusable spacecraft returned to the pad at the company’s South Texas test site in Boca Chica. The successful test run had been delayed for several days and Before that, on a clear afternoon in early March 2021, SpaceX‘s previous Starship prototype SN10 successfully ascended more than 32,000 feet at the company’s South Texas launch site in Boca Chica before making its way back to Earth in a controlled descent. Just minutes after touching the ground, it was consumed in an explosive fireball. Watching spacecraft explode and disappear in a matter of minutes is heartbreaking for the teams that spent years building them. SpaceX has seen a few failures over the past 20 years – which are still much smaller than its successes. Even company founder and big tech entrepreneur Elon Musk has repeatedly emphasized: “If you aren’t failing, you aren’t innovating enough.” This yin and yang business balance has led SpaceX to where it is now, at the verge of deep space exploration. According to Musk, the Starship is not just any reusable heavy-lift rocket; it could one day deliver crewed missions to the moon and Mars and is the company’s top priority. More importantly, only six days after the explosion, SpaceX moved a new Starship vehicle to the launchpad. The prototype SN11 already stands tall at the Texas site, gearing up for another test flight. Determined to be an integral part of space history, Musk, and his company’s ambition and perseverance could one day take humanity to the vast reaches of outer space. In the meantime, a review of recent experiences can give us a glimpse of what’s next for the company. In its quest to redefine space transportation, SpaceX is revolutionizing launch vehicle and rocket engine development while reducing the cost of access to space. Elon Musk’s $74 billion company has been leading private launches worldwide for years. Part of its manufacturing strategy is to incorporate advanced technologies, like additive manufacturing (AM). SpaceX began using 3D printing on spaceflight hardware in 2014 when its Falcon 9 rocket launched to space carrying a 3D printed Main Oxidizer Valve (MOV) body in one of its nine Merlin 1D engines. This was followed by the fully printed SuperDraco thruster to power the Dragon spacecraft capsule’s launch escape system. Currently, the SpaceX AM team works to create powder bed platforms for developing and building rocket engines. SpaceX’s pioneering liquid-fueled rockets and surging tech innovation are helping democratize access to space. In 2008, the Falcon 1 (named after the fictional Star Wars spacecraft Millennium Falcon) became the first privately-developed liquid-fuel launch vehicle to go into Earth’s orbit. Even though Falcon’s success is unquestionable today, the first version ever tested failed just 25 seconds after the flight lifted off due to corrosion between a nut and a fuel line that had allowed the line to leak, causing an engine fire. Faithful to Musk’s core beliefs, the company moved forward and has since been on an unstoppable growth trajectory, with a significant part of its funding coming from NASA. The contracts with the U.S. space agency have even funded part of the original development of SpaceX’s reusable Falcon 9 rocket which is today the backbone of the company. Falcon 9 has delivered cargo to and from the International Space Station (ISS) for over eight years and generates close to a billion dollars annually. In fact, according to Forbes estimates, as of 2019, SpaceX charged about $60 million per Falcon 9 launch and between $90 million to $150 million per Falcon Heavy launch. Following the Trefis team for Forbes analysis, SpaceX’s revenues should be $1.2 billion in 2020. Although currently the only source of revenue for the company, these commercial resupply missions are just the tip of the iceberg, as SpaceX has even bigger plans ahead. Musk has hinted at the possibility of a real “Starfleet,” referencing the fictional space force fleet in the Star Trek franchise that handles defense and peacekeeping missions. During the 2020 Air Force Association’s annual Air Warfare Symposium, Musk said, “We’ve gotta make Starfleet happen,” so that we see “big spaceships that can go far places” and a “Space Force” in our lifetime. The pioneering entrepreneur hopes to drive the innovation rate for big breakthroughs in space technology soon for any of this to happen. For now, the Dragon spacecraft powered by Falcon 9 is making great strides to move space exploration forward. After over 20 trips to the orbiting laboratory, it began flying crew to the ISS in 2020 under NASA’s Commercial Crew Program to become the first private company to launch astronauts into orbit. Yet, the Starship launch system for interplanetary spaceflight is intended to become the primary orbital vehicle at SpaceX, once it is operational, replacing Falcon 9 and Dragon. With so many new missions on the horizon, SpaceX’s next-generation Raptor engines have already begun flight testing on the Starship prototype rockets in July 2019. SpaceX aims at a lifetime of 1,000 flights for Raptor, the highest thrust to weight engine ever made. According to the company, the manufacturing process includes quite a few 3D printed parts enabling cost reductions and the production of the lightest parts possible. The printed components include propellant valves, turbopump parts, and many of the injectors’ critical parts for the initial engine development testing, which increases the speed of development and iterative testing. Musk is highly confident that Starship’s crewed missions will arrive on Mars by 2026 and will be capable of carrying cargo on long-duration interplanetary flights and to the dark side of the moon for just $2,000 per kilo. In 2023, Japanese entrepreneur Yusaku Maezawa and the crew of the lunar tourism project dearMoon will become the first civilian passengers on a lunar Starship mission, featuring a fly-by of the Moon during their week-long journey. But before any of this happens, the launch vehicle needs to pass several tests. In 2020, SpaceX’s Starship prototype got closer to the highly anticipated test flight as the SN4 version of the spacecraft survived a critical cryogenic pressure test, followed by several more challenging tests. Next, the single Raptor engine SN5 prototype successfully took to the skies in August for about 40 seconds in its first test flight after several of its predecessors were destroyed during pressurization or engine-firing tests. After a few more successful tests, the SN8 followed its first triumphant high-altitude flight with a hard landing and fierce explosion. So did the SN9, which flew to an altitude of 6.2 miles in February 2021, shutting off its three engines in sequence as it climbed higher. Then it came in for another hard landing, with the impact leading to another fireball, consuming the entire spaceship in seconds. The upcoming SN11 launch is wrapping up all qualification testing fast. Just two days after SN10 exploded, SN11 shipped to the Boca Chica site to complete ambient-temperature and cryogenic proof testing. SpaceX has been gradually speeding up the technical and regulatory process for its prototype tests. Starship SN10 took just 33 days to go from pad arrival to liftoff and spent only eight days between its first static fire and launch attempts. SN11 could launch even quicker. The final Starship vehicle that will soar to orbit will need six Raptors, stand about 165 feet tall, and carry up to 100 people, Musk explained in the past. The operational Starship will launch from Earth atop a gigantic rocket called Super Heavy powered by 31 Raptor engines. Part of the appeal is its rapid reusability expectation. Musk said that just like planes are ready for the next flight in an hour, Starship will be geared up and ready to take off again pretty soon after arriving, cutting the cost of spaceflight to make crewed trips to and from the moon, Mars, and other deep-space destinations accessible. SpaceX is helping shape the future of humanity in space by creating advanced reusable rocket technology. After every spacecraft disassembled during testing, company engineers are learning more. SN10 may have blown up after landing but it was still the first Starship to make it back to the pad in one piece. The challenge for SN11 will be to once again complete the milestones through to landing, with a refinement to the landing burn to mitigate against a hard touchdown. According to NASA, this vehicle will be the last of the current prototypes, with the next one donning unknown modifications hinted by Musk on social media some time ago. “Failure is essentially irrelevant unless it is catastrophic,” says Musk. With all three Raptors already installed on SN11 and so many plans for the coming decade, we can expect SpaceX to continue tracing the path towards a bright future off-Earth. Printing via 3DPrint.com | The Voice of 3D Printing / Additive Manufacturing https://3dprint.com March 26, 2021 at 09:41AM How the Perseverance Rover with 3D Printed Parts Is Thriving on Mars https://ift.tt/3rlacDP Following a seven-month journey, NASA’s Perseverence Rover touched down at Mars’s Jezero Crater on February 18, 2021. Since then, mission controllers have made a lot of progress, including capturing the planet’s sounds, driving on the rocky, craters of the red terrain for the first time, and transmitting over 7,000 images from the most advanced suite of cameras ever to travel to the Red Planet. After a recent virtual briefing with NASA experts to discuss upcoming milestones, we learned that the experimental helicopter Ingenuity, which remains attached to the belly of the rover, is preparing for its first flight. The agency is targeting no earlier than April 8, 2021, for the 4-pound rotorcraft to make the first attempt at a powered, controlled flight of an aircraft on another planet and in the fragile Mars atmosphere. Eventually, this first “hovering” activity will be followed by additional experimental flights of incrementally farther distance and greater altitude.
After a month on Mars, Perseverence, which is equipped with 3D printed parts, is progressing as planned. Several exciting milestones have already proven the car-sized robot’s resilience as it prepares to carry out scientific goals. This includes testing technologies that would help sustain an interplanetary human presence or collect rock and soil samples to bring back to Earth. Among the seven instruments that the rover is carrying is the Planetary Instrument for X-ray Lithochemistry (PIXL), a lunchbox-sized device that will seek out signs of fossilized microbial life by shooting X-ray beams at rock surfaces to analyze them. PIXL is not only crucial for finding traces of life on rock features as small as a grain of salt, but it is relevant on a manufacturing level as well, considering the 10-pound lab tool has five 3D printed parts incorporated into its structure. To develop the 3D printed components, NASA worked with its Jet Propulsion Lab (JPL) at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) to achieve PIXL’s lightest weight. The JPL team turned to metal AM service provider Carpenter Additive to print the instrument’s two-piece titanium shell, a mounting frame, and two support struts. Traditional manufacturing would have yielded end parts with three or four times more mass than 3D printed ones. PIXL’s lead mechanical engineer at JPL, Michael Schein, even said, “3D printing made this instrument possible” by allowing the team to achieve a low mass and high-precision pointing that could not be made with conventional fabrication. As part of the U.S. space agency’s exploration of 3D printing technologies to build rocket engines, create spacecraft parts, and develop potential orbital outposts off-Earth, Perseverance has been equipped with a total of eleven 3D printed metal parts. This should come as no surprise, considering its predecessor Curiosity was the first mission to take 3D printing to the Red Planet, landing in 2012 with a 3D printed ceramic part inside its oven-like Sample Analysis at Mars (SAM) instrument. NASA has since continued to test 3D printing for use in spacecraft to make sure the reliability of the parts is well understood. The agency has suggested that as “secondary structures,” Perseverance’s printed parts wouldn’t jeopardize the mission if they failed to work as planned, but as Andre Pate, the group leader for AM at JPL, said, “Flying these parts to Mars is a huge milestone that opens the door a little more for additive manufacturing in the space industry.” However, it seems NASA is doing much more than opening a door for 3D printing. In the last eight years, it has taken up several related tasks, including the Rapid Analysis and Manufacturing Propulsion Technology (RAMPT) project to advance the development of AM techniques for printing large scale rocket engine parts using metal powders and lasers and partnering with companies like Stratasys to create optimized 3D printed structures for satellites. NASA even allowed astronauts aboard the International Space Station (ISS) to test 3D printing technologies in zero gravity, thanks to five platforms developed in collaboration with Made In Space, Tethers, 3D Bioprinting Solutions, and nScrypt, which have been successfully deployed and utilized in orbit. The latest in a series of Mars rovers, Perseverance carries six other 3D printed parts in another one of its instruments. The Mars Oxygen In-Situ Resource Utilization Experiment (MOXIE) is a device that will test technology that could potentially produce industrial quantities of oxygen to create rocket propellant on Mars, helping astronauts launch back to Earth. While a conventionally machined heat exchanger would need to be made out of two parts and welded together, MOXIE’s were each 3D printed as a single piece at Caltech. The latest Red Planet technologies are nearing a fascinating time for space exploration. Ingenuity’s upcoming first flight will open new possibilities and challenges for the future of off-Earth aerial exploration. Nonetheless, before Ingenuity takes its first flight on Mars, it must be squarely in the middle of a chosen flat “airfield” patch. Then, the elaborate process to deploy the helicopter on the surface will take about six sols, that’s six Earth days. The team will then spend up to 30 Martian days, or 31 Earth days, doing everything possible to ensure a successful flight, including wiggling the rotor blades and verifying the performance of the inertial measurement unit.
Subsequent NASA missions to Mars, the Moon, and beyond are already in the works. The director for planetary science at JPL, Bobby Braun, said, “if we can scout and scientifically survey Mars from the air, with its thin atmosphere, we can certainly do the same at several other destinations across the solar system, like Titan or Venus.” Actually, targeting 2027 for its Dragonfly mission, NASA plans to send a rotorcraft to Saturn’s moon Titan to advance further search on the building blocks of life. Nevertheless, in the more immediate future, we can expect to see the Artemis program taking giant leaps by sending astronauts to the Moon in 2024 (a timeline many have deemed unrealistic) and later on to Mars. In preparation for the mission, the space agency has a concept for the core surface elements needed to establish a sustained presence in space, and is investing in advanced manufacturing, considered one of five industries of the future to enable space exploration. For a moon mission, however, the critical lander craft is essential to take people from lunar orbit down to the surface and back up. That alone has already opened up a range of possibilities for 3D printing to outperform other technologies. To learn more about all of the 3D printing that’s going into the future of space travel, visit 3DPrint.com’s new Space Zone. Printing via 3DPrint.com | The Voice of 3D Printing / Additive Manufacturing https://3dprint.com March 26, 2021 at 08:32AM
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3D Printed Concrete Furniture Given Soft Aesthetic with Gradient Color Technique https://ift.tt/3vX6i7X When I hear the phrase “3D printed concrete furniture,” my first thought is how incredibly uncomfortable that sounds. But looking at the new 3D printed gradient furniture collection by Vienna-based designer Philipp Aduatz, you wouldn’t even realize that the pieces were made from hard concrete at first glance. This collection is the designer’s latest use of 3D concrete printing, or 3DCP, and he partnered with Austrian concrete 3D printing company incremental3D to develop it.
By utilizing concrete materials, it’s possible to print large, complex structures—even buildings—in a much shorter amount of time. On top of the fact that molds don’t need to be produced, there are also economic and ecological advantages to using concrete for additive construction. incremental3d is in the middle of a research project at the moment that involves coloring concrete, and the company is experimenting with dyeing the 3D printed hard material. In order to achieve a colored concrete design, incremental3D discovered that the dye needs to be added directly into the nozzle during 3D printing, which allows the colored to be locally applied, point by point, as opposed to globally applied. Not only does this technique, displayed below, create a nice aesthetic, but it also decreases waste, workload, and project time as well. incremental3D wanted to keep improving its technology, and figured a good way to do so would be applying its research techniques in real-life product design, and began collaborating with Aduatz, who’s worked with advanced technologies like 3D printing, CNC milling, and 3D laser scanning before. According to his website, the designer creates limited edition objects that are very sculptural as well as functional. Largely influenced by “scientific matters such as chemistry, physics and material technologies,” Aduatz enjoys experimenting with different materials and how they behave, making this a match made in heaven.
An image gradient is essentially the changing of a color’s intensity within an image; for instance, dark blue would slowly give way to light blue, or vice versa. In terms of image processing, the gradient is a critical “building block” of the image. Aduatz and incremental3D worked together to design and build a beautiful furniture collection, which includes a chair, a stool, benches, and a large vase, all 3D printed using what appears to be a robotic arm system. Together, the partners figured out how to apply a gradient to their concrete pieces by dyeing them during the print process, and it seems they had fun exploring the various shapes the technology is capable of achieving as well. Additionally, they had to come up with a reinforcement technology that could add the load capacity for this specific design language, as concrete does not have much tensile strength on its own. After calculating and testing the required design payloads, they developed a customized, semi-automatic strategy for reinforcing the 3D printed concrete dyed chair and benches with steel. The 60 x 60 x 152 cm vase, 149 x 56 x 45 cm small bench, and 230 x 56 x 45 cm large bench come in blue, beige, black, green, and red colors, though there are only 50 of each limited edition piece available. The limited edition 54 x 56 x 45 cm stool is not steel-reinforced, though it comes in the same colors. The 108 x 95 x 102 cm Fauteuil chair was also reinforced with steel, and is available in blue, beige, black, green, and red, though this is apparently a super limited edition piece, as there only appear to be ten. (Source: Philipp Aduatz / All studio photos © by Paris Tsitsos) Printing via 3DPrint.com | The Voice of 3D Printing / Additive Manufacturing https://3dprint.com March 26, 2021 at 08:02AM |
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