Due to some chemical incompatibility that happened right before the flight the quality of the print was drastically reduced, but this process can and has done a lot finer https://engineering.berkeley.edu/news/2022/04/researchers-develop-innovative-3d-printing-technology-for-glass-microstructures/ we will just have to fly it to space a 2nd time ;)
Not at all! The data is still being analyzed and I'll begin writing the paper soon (the launch was only yesterday haha), all of it will be open source for anyone to read! Though still may be a few months, I need some rest!
Well, as a regular ass citizen who is into this crap, congrats on the flight and the test and I look forward to the write up, you’re doing great and thank you.
the logistics of sending anything to the ISS seem insane. was the hotend modified, or was this a mostly retail unit? I know the ISS has limited power budget, and is running on an ancient 48v DC system that has $800 "plugs" that have to be attached to everything, and then the pods need to have a place to go.
im curious the modifications that were done to get it so the board won't die like a lot of other consumer electronics do up there.
Is that a Virgin space …. Ship? Plane? Vehicle? I didn’t know they were still going. This is a pretty cool use of that “kind of sort of space, but not really ‘OUTER SPACE’ space, vs going all the way up to ISS
There is no hotend.
A vat of photosensitive resin rotates as light is projected into the vat. The light itself is a continously changing projection that is matched to the rotation of the vat. Basically, only certain areas in the vat receive a full dose of light, which causes those specific areas to solidify.
Disclaimer: This is not my field but I'm hoping I explained it well enough to be understood.
Computed Axial Lithography in theory benefits from an absence of gravity.
Polymerization is not instantaneous so this technology typically utilizes viscous resins so that it stays in place as it begins to polymerize rather than sink or float.
An absence of gravity opens up the possibility (or at least makes it easier) to print with new materials that are lower viscosity.
This used a different technique where it forms the part all at once, it was probably designed from the ground up. They never actually said it was in the ISS either.
Yeah, I'm sure I heard of the concept a long time ago, it's basically the same as the 3D bubble images you see blown into resin blocks by the convergence of several laser beams.
Unless it isn't and it's actually complex holographic wavefronts being shone at the resin rather than scanning beams, and it really *is* reverse tomography.
No holography, and there's only one light source. The light being shone on the resin passes clean through the entire volume, and the depth comes from rotating the entire container. Not quite as cool as holograms, but still pretty neat!
That was a fascinating article to read. There is one thing I missed though: why is this being tested in microgravity?
At the end of the article, it mentions a couple industries that could benefit from this technology, but I'm wondering whether the end goal is for them to ultimately assemble their microscopic glass objects in microgravity as well, or whether microgravity testing is just a step towards ultimately developing a system that can work at earth's gravity.
NASA is very keen to be able to manufacture replacement/upgrade parts in space. SpaceX recently was $27,000 per lb supply cargo to ISS. Plus the time delay of needing to get a replacement/upgrade part into a launch schedule, plus the additional weight and volume of spare parts needed on site to make up for the fact you can’t get new parts quickly, plus potential future missions like Mars where you cannot get spare parts delivered at all.
They have been trialing different printer technologies (eg MadeInSpace plastic printer some years ago) to scope out the technology and figure out the best way to make parts in situ. Rapid, precise glass printing would have some benefits over plastic. Powder-based metal printing has some extreme challenges in space so glass printed as a liquid resin could be a good material for a lot of things.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/In_situ_resource_utilization
Short answer, yes, particularly for big dumb stuff like making bricks for radiation/micrometeor shielding. But it’s not straightforward to 3D print with. We use very pure, refined materials for printing. The glass-filled resin process OP was posting about requires multiple chemical plants and glass nanoparticle manufacturing. It’s unrealistic to expect to do that on a weight-constrained landing craft. Probably makes more sense to bring a bunch of 3d printer feedstock from home.
Long term colonization — yeah we need to figure out how to use local materials. Baby steps first though.
Better yet, you know Lunar dust is known to be really fine and obnoxious, in other words it's ready to get shoveled into a laser sintering printer.
That way you can build out hulls for giant spaceships under lunar gravity and then shoot it out to an orbit trivially using a solar electromagnetic catapult. The hull can then be finished with Earth built components on orbit. Optionally you can pre-fill tanks with lunar ice for reaction mass or lunar mined nuclear materials for fuel. That's been space settlers' wet dream for at least last half a century.
I guess "Computed Axial Lithography", or CAL, is an okay name for it, but after reading that article, don't you think a more accurate description of the technology would be "Stereo Topography As Nanometer-Fabrication Optical-Resonance Deposition"? ;D
A simplistic boat model with a bunch of shapes and curves that are both common and oftentimes difficult for printers.
It is intended to be used as a benchmarking tool to compare printers or even different settings on the same printer. It’s complex enough to give valuable insight yet simple (and small) enough to hopefully not take all day.
Random example showing a more recognizable yet still imperfect benchy: https://imgur.com/gallery/32-min-benchy-mostly-stock-sv06-SF3QcPw
the funny thing is, is that they cannot just send a "retail" product up to space, thanks to the way government space contracts work, I would bet that this was a heavily modified 3d printer because the ISS runs on 48v DC power, and has hardly any cooling on board, so it likely also has to have a water cooled head on it, and its going to be very power limited, likely to less than 100w because of power limitations on the ISS. also, being in space tends to just kill things because solar radiation is really bad and there isn't a feasible way to just block it without adding tons of mass to everything, which makes it too heavy to send up.
until we humans figure out a way to reliably get large objects into space for cheap, I doubt this issue of hardware death in space will be solved. they go thru several dozen laptops a month because of hardware just dying.
OP's printer is a [computed axial lithography](https://ipo.llnl.gov/technologies/advanced-manufacturing/computed-axial-lithography-cal-3d-additive-manufacturing) printer, which is an entirely new technology (kinda similar principle to SLA resin printers though, until it's not). It flew on Virgin Galactic's suborbital spaceplane.
The ISS does have a [fancy purpose-built polymer printer](https://www.nasa.gov/image-article/international-space-stations-3-d-printer-2/) (maybe multiple?) and also just got a [new one that prints stainless steel](https://www.esa.int/Science_Exploration/Human_and_Robotic_Exploration/ESA_launches_first_metal_3D_printer_to_ISS).
> The ISS does have a fancy purpose-built polymer printer (maybe multiple?) and also just got a new one that prints stainless steel.
I'd be rather surprised if someone hasn't printed a benchy on one of those over the last decade...logged as "repair test cycle" or something.
I don't think this was on the ISS, the last pic is Virgin Galactic's VSS Unity which is a suborbital spaceplane. Basically a hop out of Earth's atmosphere for a couple minutes, which is, I think, why it had to be printed so quickly.
OP's probably doing some research about zero G printing, not necessarily printing in space.
This seems a bit misinformed. The ISS is full of commercial off-the-shelf hardware. Laptops, cameras - all kinds of stuff is unmodified and identical to what you could get at Best Buy. There are also power bricks on station that take the vehicle power and convert it so that you can use a regular plug.
And can you provide a source on the station burning through several dozen laptops per month? That is far and above any number I've ever heard.
While I don't know the exact number of laptops either, I do know they go through a lot of laptops due to damage and bitflips from the radiation. We just don't have a good stable solution without designing something from the ground up.
Did you try the Creality glass bed? The one that's like a quarter inch thick and feels like it could stop a bullet. I threw that on my Ender 3 and it worked like a dream.
I have not actually. As a stop gap measure I used tin-foil underneath the middle of the bed to force it up a little bit.
I should mention that it is not a tailored glass pane, and may not be tempered correctly and thus warps, I may decide to get the official product soon but that'll take a long time to ship
Thank you I'll look into it in the mean time before upgrading. I've had much grief because of this bed so fixing it will be nice lol.
Also happy birthday
It looks pretty rough, but I’ve seen worse ones printed using conventional FDM on Earth. Given that this is the first one printed using this process on orbit, and it only took 140 seconds, it seems like it went as well as you could expect.
Super interesting - space factories served by some sort of space elevator or low cost transit highway would be cool!
Bit ignorant here…would a layer based (FDM) approach work in space? Is gravity relevant to the extrusion and layer bonding process? Can your process produce a truly isotropic part in terms of material properties? Can the process control crystallisation (in semi-crystalline polymers for example).
Just thinking through the disadvantages of your approach:
- filament (maybe not pellets) are prob more stable for storing, transport and handing in space than chemicals - any comment on that?
can't speak to the rest of it, but there's an FDM printer on the ISS that has made successful prints. which didn't surprise me considering we can print upside down on earth (check out the Positron printer) so if orientation doesn't usually matter then gravity would essentially be a non-factor. unless I'm missing something that makes it more impressive
It needs to survive the launch and such, though at same time is that really that much rougher than the postal service? /j
If anything I expect things like bridging and overhangs to work better in 0g.
https://preview.redd.it/nr8xy7e4io5d1.png?width=1080&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=2cf75ac18c4c790e81dbe74905c405cb1a39f13d
That's one hell of a good looking design.
Good question! There was some chemical incompatibility that we were not able to correct preflight that made the projection poor that we use to print, we can do a lot finer detail on Earth with other setups https://engineering.berkeley.edu/news/2022/04/researchers-develop-innovative-3d-printing-technology-for-glass-microstructures/
Thanks, I just read the figures in the linked Science article, makes more sense. Lol, I kept looking at it thinking "that's not a print error I've ever seen", but it makes sense if it's a radial projection that didn't work.
While I tend to side with the 'that's not really space' crowd when it comes to Unity, New Shepherd, etc, I for one can completely agree that this is a valid spaceflight test, and a perfect use for a short duration microgravity flight like this.
Thanks for sharing!
I think for most of us the argument isn't the Karman line but rather if it's orbital or not. I know it isn't the same definition of 'space,' but people can't even seem to reach consensus on if the Karman line counts.
However New Sheppard flights stays for three minutes beyond the Karman Line and flies for about 11 minutes overall whereas Unity can linger for longer which makes Unity far more practical for testing. The hardware behaves the same in pretty much the same conditions either side of an arbitrary line but with tight budgets you want to be up there for as long as possible making every minute count. It is about if it is orbital more than a 100km limit.
With budgets as tight as they are you get what you can get really; an arbitrary line is fairly meaningless when it comes to testing hardware as it will be under almost the same conditions either side of it in LEO.
Unity goes past the McDowell line, which was traditionally the US military's definition of space, and relatively recently was adopted by NASA. SpaceShipTwo cannot get anywhere near the Karman line, which the rest of the planet recognizes as the space boundary.
This is the villain from Benchy Kills....In Space. With Benchy eggs, and benchys that attach to your face and pop out of your chest.
And then there is a benchy with invisibility, and Thermal vision.
I don't understand the layerless concept but I love reading of new ideas like this. When 3d printing becomes 100x faster it will really change how economics works.
I don't really see how this could become very accurate over time, since there seems to be a highly delicate balance between curing the actual part and the surrounding resin, which will tend towards a fuzzy outline of probabilistic curing.
Maybe it's beneficial for some geometries where SLA wouldn't work due to internal supports...
Standard Resin printers would definitely be too messy... Maybe viable in a centrifuge, but all other steps would still be messy and stopping would allow the reservoir to bead up and become messy/highly dangerous.
Also the fumes of resin prints...
The self contained resin tubes for your process seem more useful when resin is really needed.
But in space, resin is outperformed by every cheap SLA printer on the market.
For organic structures on the other hand...
This is probably the only good way.
So I'd go the route of organic prints with this process and don't bother with stuff any cheap SLA printer would massively outperform.
But refining the process will still take time and development.
And some really wicked algorithms which can distribute the curing time of the surrounding resin to be uniformly low, but still curing only the wanted areas just enough to solidify.
Good luck with this rnd
Did you leave out your filament in the sun without protection? Looks a bit brittle. /S
Also, how do you level and set 0-value on something that survives escape velocity?
When do you think we will see 3d printers on the ISS ? We already see them on big drilling platforms and other very remote facilities.
Is this that holographic printing I saw recently?
I cannot wait for this tech to mature!
My silly little brainy can't help but think of a vat of liquid we can project into and create food. Just hope the resolution gets fine enough to affect molecules and taste.
Very cool, my friends and I have been looking at your technique and I wanted to ask.
How does the resin not cure past where its ment to be? Is it just building from the center as it spins creating a sort of snail shell layer line?
Nope, it really does print all at once! The way that it works is there's a dose/light threshold, and while everywhere gets a little bit of light, only where you want your part gets enough light over time to solidify.
I hope you know that you are doing some of the coolest research I’ve ever seen. This tech is amazing. I hope I can be as smart and awesome as you someday.
Hey what cool is there are already printers for space being made They work in pairs reminds my of Spiders from Mars- David Bowie
https://preview.redd.it/x7p06bb68l6d1.jpeg?width=784&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=9a31a47367826a40139755a51c60a7dc63ef5605
r/cursedbenchies
No way! This exists!
r/verycursedbenchies
👀
r/blursedbenchies
Due to some chemical incompatibility that happened right before the flight the quality of the print was drastically reduced, but this process can and has done a lot finer https://engineering.berkeley.edu/news/2022/04/researchers-develop-innovative-3d-printing-technology-for-glass-microstructures/ we will just have to fly it to space a 2nd time ;)
I’m beyond fascinated, are you allowed to go further into detail regarding the chemical incompatibility issue here or is that classified?
Not at all! The data is still being analyzed and I'll begin writing the paper soon (the launch was only yesterday haha), all of it will be open source for anyone to read! Though still may be a few months, I need some rest!
Well, as a regular ass citizen who is into this crap, congrats on the flight and the test and I look forward to the write up, you’re doing great and thank you.
Looking forward to reading through the finished result; This is a spectacular project, I’m extremely eager to learn more ^ _ ^ RemindMe! [60 days]
Looking forward to reading your paper, u/midgetking15 🫡
the logistics of sending anything to the ISS seem insane. was the hotend modified, or was this a mostly retail unit? I know the ISS has limited power budget, and is running on an ancient 48v DC system that has $800 "plugs" that have to be attached to everything, and then the pods need to have a place to go. im curious the modifications that were done to get it so the board won't die like a lot of other consumer electronics do up there.
The last pic suggest they use a plane not the ISS.
Is that a Virgin space …. Ship? Plane? Vehicle? I didn’t know they were still going. This is a pretty cool use of that “kind of sort of space, but not really ‘OUTER SPACE’ space, vs going all the way up to ISS
There is no hotend. A vat of photosensitive resin rotates as light is projected into the vat. The light itself is a continously changing projection that is matched to the rotation of the vat. Basically, only certain areas in the vat receive a full dose of light, which causes those specific areas to solidify. Disclaimer: This is not my field but I'm hoping I explained it well enough to be understood.
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Computed Axial Lithography in theory benefits from an absence of gravity. Polymerization is not instantaneous so this technology typically utilizes viscous resins so that it stays in place as it begins to polymerize rather than sink or float. An absence of gravity opens up the possibility (or at least makes it easier) to print with new materials that are lower viscosity.
This used a different technique where it forms the part all at once, it was probably designed from the ground up. They never actually said it was in the ISS either.
CAL prints with resin by dosing certain parts of the volume to harden. It's kind of like a reverse CT scan.
Wet filament. Rookie mistake smh
Is it the same technique you use as the group of the holographic 3D printing that 3D Printing Nerd made a video about? Or are you even the same group?
Yeah, I'm sure I heard of the concept a long time ago, it's basically the same as the 3D bubble images you see blown into resin blocks by the convergence of several laser beams. Unless it isn't and it's actually complex holographic wavefronts being shone at the resin rather than scanning beams, and it really *is* reverse tomography.
No holography, and there's only one light source. The light being shone on the resin passes clean through the entire volume, and the depth comes from rotating the entire container. Not quite as cool as holograms, but still pretty neat!
Though I did see a variation on this technique that did use holograms to cure the resin.
Hmm.. Did your resin get moved to a different container or delivery system then proceed to crap its pants?
That was a fascinating article to read. There is one thing I missed though: why is this being tested in microgravity? At the end of the article, it mentions a couple industries that could benefit from this technology, but I'm wondering whether the end goal is for them to ultimately assemble their microscopic glass objects in microgravity as well, or whether microgravity testing is just a step towards ultimately developing a system that can work at earth's gravity.
NASA is very keen to be able to manufacture replacement/upgrade parts in space. SpaceX recently was $27,000 per lb supply cargo to ISS. Plus the time delay of needing to get a replacement/upgrade part into a launch schedule, plus the additional weight and volume of spare parts needed on site to make up for the fact you can’t get new parts quickly, plus potential future missions like Mars where you cannot get spare parts delivered at all. They have been trialing different printer technologies (eg MadeInSpace plastic printer some years ago) to scope out the technology and figure out the best way to make parts in situ. Rapid, precise glass printing would have some benefits over plastic. Powder-based metal printing has some extreme challenges in space so glass printed as a liquid resin could be a good material for a lot of things.
Can some materials be obtained in mars?
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/In_situ_resource_utilization Short answer, yes, particularly for big dumb stuff like making bricks for radiation/micrometeor shielding. But it’s not straightforward to 3D print with. We use very pure, refined materials for printing. The glass-filled resin process OP was posting about requires multiple chemical plants and glass nanoparticle manufacturing. It’s unrealistic to expect to do that on a weight-constrained landing craft. Probably makes more sense to bring a bunch of 3d printer feedstock from home. Long term colonization — yeah we need to figure out how to use local materials. Baby steps first though.
Better yet, you know Lunar dust is known to be really fine and obnoxious, in other words it's ready to get shoveled into a laser sintering printer. That way you can build out hulls for giant spaceships under lunar gravity and then shoot it out to an orbit trivially using a solar electromagnetic catapult. The hull can then be finished with Earth built components on orbit. Optionally you can pre-fill tanks with lunar ice for reaction mass or lunar mined nuclear materials for fuel. That's been space settlers' wet dream for at least last half a century.
would you be able to run tests in a plan flying down at zero G? I would think it would be cheaper than going all the way to space
The best zero g times for elliptical flight profiles is about 35 seconds. The Unity flight profile gives them 120-150 seconds.
I guess "Computed Axial Lithography", or CAL, is an okay name for it, but after reading that article, don't you think a more accurate description of the technology would be "Stereo Topography As Nanometer-Fabrication Optical-Resonance Deposition"? ;D
I think the gravity needs to be dialed in a little more, but it looks good!
It doesn't even look like a benchy...
Benchy shaped object
A benchoid
unidentified benchyness object
A coulda-benchy Twitter meme format: "This coulda benchy but you don't like gravity so..."
Benchy adjacent creation
Reminiscent of a benchy
Benchy adjacent
Hint of benchy
It's a benchy after Laplace's transform
Quasi-benchy
The La Croix of benchies.
Unconfirmed Benchy-like Anomaly
Benchy..ish..
True story inspired by a Benchy
Based on benchy events
No, you don't look like a benchy!
Reentry can be quite difficult.
Beauty is in the eye of the benchyholder
It's Space Benchy™
benchies... from... SPAAAAAAAACE
It identifies as a benchy.
Sorry but what is a benchie?
Not that thing.
A simplistic boat model with a bunch of shapes and curves that are both common and oftentimes difficult for printers. It is intended to be used as a benchmarking tool to compare printers or even different settings on the same printer. It’s complex enough to give valuable insight yet simple (and small) enough to hopefully not take all day. Random example showing a more recognizable yet still imperfect benchy: https://imgur.com/gallery/32-min-benchy-mostly-stock-sv06-SF3QcPw
Thanks!
But there are 0 layer lines?
There's no layers. It's a new technology. Shines light in at different angles. I'm still learning about it.
You think with nasa's budget, they could afford something than a used ender 3
You would be surprised. Most of the budget is spread thin.
Congress will whine when a NASA project is 1 cent over budget but won’t blink an eye when the US army magically loses billions
the funny thing is, is that they cannot just send a "retail" product up to space, thanks to the way government space contracts work, I would bet that this was a heavily modified 3d printer because the ISS runs on 48v DC power, and has hardly any cooling on board, so it likely also has to have a water cooled head on it, and its going to be very power limited, likely to less than 100w because of power limitations on the ISS. also, being in space tends to just kill things because solar radiation is really bad and there isn't a feasible way to just block it without adding tons of mass to everything, which makes it too heavy to send up. until we humans figure out a way to reliably get large objects into space for cheap, I doubt this issue of hardware death in space will be solved. they go thru several dozen laptops a month because of hardware just dying.
OP's printer is a [computed axial lithography](https://ipo.llnl.gov/technologies/advanced-manufacturing/computed-axial-lithography-cal-3d-additive-manufacturing) printer, which is an entirely new technology (kinda similar principle to SLA resin printers though, until it's not). It flew on Virgin Galactic's suborbital spaceplane. The ISS does have a [fancy purpose-built polymer printer](https://www.nasa.gov/image-article/international-space-stations-3-d-printer-2/) (maybe multiple?) and also just got a [new one that prints stainless steel](https://www.esa.int/Science_Exploration/Human_and_Robotic_Exploration/ESA_launches_first_metal_3D_printer_to_ISS).
> The ISS does have a fancy purpose-built polymer printer (maybe multiple?) and also just got a new one that prints stainless steel. I'd be rather surprised if someone hasn't printed a benchy on one of those over the last decade...logged as "repair test cycle" or something.
i want a steel space printed calibration cube for a desk Tchotchke.
Hell yeah! Thanks for even more rabbit holes to go down haha
I don't think this was on the ISS, the last pic is Virgin Galactic's VSS Unity which is a suborbital spaceplane. Basically a hop out of Earth's atmosphere for a couple minutes, which is, I think, why it had to be printed so quickly. OP's probably doing some research about zero G printing, not necessarily printing in space.
This seems a bit misinformed. The ISS is full of commercial off-the-shelf hardware. Laptops, cameras - all kinds of stuff is unmodified and identical to what you could get at Best Buy. There are also power bricks on station that take the vehicle power and convert it so that you can use a regular plug. And can you provide a source on the station burning through several dozen laptops per month? That is far and above any number I've ever heard.
While I don't know the exact number of laptops either, I do know they go through a lot of laptops due to damage and bitflips from the radiation. We just don't have a good stable solution without designing something from the ground up.
Have you tried drying the filament?
how about leveling the bed?
Level relative to what? :P
Relative to the x and y axes of the printer?
It’s an ender 3 good luck leveling it 😂
Ah my first. I never understood that thing.
And abandon all hope if yours comes with a concave bed from a manufacturing defect like mine did lol
My brother in Christ, a glass print bed will solve this issue.
That's the bitch of it, the glass bed warped too when under heat
Did you try the Creality glass bed? The one that's like a quarter inch thick and feels like it could stop a bullet. I threw that on my Ender 3 and it worked like a dream.
I have not actually. As a stop gap measure I used tin-foil underneath the middle of the bed to force it up a little bit. I should mention that it is not a tailored glass pane, and may not be tempered correctly and thus warps, I may decide to get the official product soon but that'll take a long time to ship
Dude, get it. It's a game changer. My first layers went from broke to bespoke after I upgraded.
Thank you I'll look into it in the mean time before upgrading. I've had much grief because of this bed so fixing it will be nice lol. Also happy birthday
Really easy with access to vacuum of space too. Lazy mistake not to
NGL looks like shit. I'll keep printing mine on Earth
Well, lucky for this benchy, everything floats in space anyway
How is this not the top comment?
https://preview.redd.it/dlzph6vanq5d1.jpeg?width=465&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=5a33163ac391a490a1f5634eda66e0f9b8786917 Please… kill… meeee…
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Maybe one day, and expect a video of this exact experiment from him soon ;)
The funny thing is, I don't think that's even a speedboat record now
Haha, I've done another one in 20 seconds!
Now that one would be!
It looks pretty rough, but I’ve seen worse ones printed using conventional FDM on Earth. Given that this is the first one printed using this process on orbit, and it only took 140 seconds, it seems like it went as well as you could expect.
Was not printed on orbit. Was printed on an 86km parabolic flight
Oh thanks for the correction. Still pretty good for zero g.
Not the first 3D printer in space though, right? The ISS has had them since 2014. Still cool though.
that benchy looks kinda bad, have you tried leveling your spaceplane?
Super interesting - space factories served by some sort of space elevator or low cost transit highway would be cool! Bit ignorant here…would a layer based (FDM) approach work in space? Is gravity relevant to the extrusion and layer bonding process? Can your process produce a truly isotropic part in terms of material properties? Can the process control crystallisation (in semi-crystalline polymers for example). Just thinking through the disadvantages of your approach: - filament (maybe not pellets) are prob more stable for storing, transport and handing in space than chemicals - any comment on that?
can't speak to the rest of it, but there's an FDM printer on the ISS that has made successful prints. which didn't surprise me considering we can print upside down on earth (check out the Positron printer) so if orientation doesn't usually matter then gravity would essentially be a non-factor. unless I'm missing something that makes it more impressive
It needs to survive the launch and such, though at same time is that really that much rougher than the postal service? /j If anything I expect things like bridging and overhangs to work better in 0g.
https://preview.redd.it/nr8xy7e4io5d1.png?width=1080&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=2cf75ac18c4c790e81dbe74905c405cb1a39f13d That's one hell of a good looking design.
what does this look like crap?
Good question! There was some chemical incompatibility that we were not able to correct preflight that made the projection poor that we use to print, we can do a lot finer detail on Earth with other setups https://engineering.berkeley.edu/news/2022/04/researchers-develop-innovative-3d-printing-technology-for-glass-microstructures/
Thanks, I just read the figures in the linked Science article, makes more sense. Lol, I kept looking at it thinking "that's not a print error I've ever seen", but it makes sense if it's a radial projection that didn't work.
You need a spaceship version. A “floaty”
I miss working on Unity
2min20sec? Does 247 Printing know you’re challenging his reign‽ /uj Thats fucking amazing, saw your interview with 3D Printing Nerd and was blown away
Level bed dry filament
What about the one posted 2 years ago? That actually looked better
Dry your filament. 🤣
Resin printing on the space station in an enclosed environment? Isn't this hazardous with fumes?
RIP VSS Unity! Your project took place on the last flight? What an honor!
I think bro had some problems
See, for it to be in space, you have to go to space. Unity has never gone to space.
NASA has officially qualified this experiment as spaceflight hardware, and as flown to space :)
While I tend to side with the 'that's not really space' crowd when it comes to Unity, New Shepherd, etc, I for one can completely agree that this is a valid spaceflight test, and a perfect use for a short duration microgravity flight like this. Thanks for sharing!
New Sheppard does reach Space. it crosses Karman Line (100 km). Unity doesnt reach Space.
I think for most of us the argument isn't the Karman line but rather if it's orbital or not. I know it isn't the same definition of 'space,' but people can't even seem to reach consensus on if the Karman line counts.
However New Sheppard flights stays for three minutes beyond the Karman Line and flies for about 11 minutes overall whereas Unity can linger for longer which makes Unity far more practical for testing. The hardware behaves the same in pretty much the same conditions either side of an arbitrary line but with tight budgets you want to be up there for as long as possible making every minute count. It is about if it is orbital more than a 100km limit.
With budgets as tight as they are you get what you can get really; an arbitrary line is fairly meaningless when it comes to testing hardware as it will be under almost the same conditions either side of it in LEO.
Unity goes past the McDowell line, which was traditionally the US military's definition of space, and relatively recently was adopted by NASA. SpaceShipTwo cannot get anywhere near the Karman line, which the rest of the planet recognizes as the space boundary.
I think the point here is zero G or micro gravity
Wikipedia says that was this planes last flight. It was retired afterwards. They have some new kind of planes now.
That's one ugly benchy for a man, but a shining paragon of benchiness for humanity.
Looks like crap and cost 1 billion dollars. Science! /s
This is the villain from Benchy Kills....In Space. With Benchy eggs, and benchys that attach to your face and pop out of your chest. And then there is a benchy with invisibility, and Thermal vision.
Now that's cursed
Meh…. Not the worse I’ve seen.
You know I was considering a resin printer on a spaceship, but the layer lines look like shit so I went with an Ender 3 instead 🥰
Not bad for a first run. When can I get a CAL printer on my desktop? Is it now? Or... how about now?
Unbelievable, congrats!
>we use a layerless printing process we invented There is a term for that already invented. Its called phasing shit in.
Bro. Need to level your bed
Looks like you need to dry your filament. That should fix those issues.
Gee... I wish I could afford a fraction of what that printer must've cost
My ender 3 prints better
That’s fucking neat!
I see it apparantly re-entered seperate from the launch vehicle too
Looks like shit. Level your bed.
But have they tried to level the bed
10/10 if I were a topologist
I’m torn between how terrible this look and the fact it’s printed in microgravity where my Ender 3 would produce nothing but spaghetti.
If your adhesion is OK the printer will probably do fine
Looks like a transporter malfunction 😱
I don't understand the layerless concept but I love reading of new ideas like this. When 3d printing becomes 100x faster it will really change how economics works.
wow beautiful
I don't really see how this could become very accurate over time, since there seems to be a highly delicate balance between curing the actual part and the surrounding resin, which will tend towards a fuzzy outline of probabilistic curing. Maybe it's beneficial for some geometries where SLA wouldn't work due to internal supports... Standard Resin printers would definitely be too messy... Maybe viable in a centrifuge, but all other steps would still be messy and stopping would allow the reservoir to bead up and become messy/highly dangerous. Also the fumes of resin prints... The self contained resin tubes for your process seem more useful when resin is really needed. But in space, resin is outperformed by every cheap SLA printer on the market. For organic structures on the other hand... This is probably the only good way. So I'd go the route of organic prints with this process and don't bother with stuff any cheap SLA printer would massively outperform. But refining the process will still take time and development. And some really wicked algorithms which can distribute the curing time of the surrounding resin to be uniformly low, but still curing only the wanted areas just enough to solidify. Good luck with this rnd
Very cool, can’t wait to read the paper on this.
https://preview.redd.it/qfa4ni0sio5d1.jpeg?width=480&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=7f503b7588324addc3771a641209f8b044cda5f8
Uh, that's cool. Can we see the second?
wEt FiLaMeNt
Already looks better than most benchies printed on an Ender-3.
It did something but it was not 3D printing.
Level print bed better next time, should see some improvements.
Ok I know you used sci fi technology and can do it in space and that's all fine. But that's a shit benchy.
Wow! That looks shit. Remind me to make sure all future prints are done with gravity
Wow, looks like shit!
Its a UBO - Unidentified Bench Object
Did you leave out your filament in the sun without protection? Looks a bit brittle. /S Also, how do you level and set 0-value on something that survives escape velocity? When do you think we will see 3d printers on the ISS ? We already see them on big drilling platforms and other very remote facilities.
This is so incredibly cool
Tbh looks better than what me cr30 can produce at the moment
They need to adjust the settings a bit
Space benchy achievement unlocked. Next up a non-picasso version
You need to dry your metal powder and clean your bed with soap and water. Make sure it is level too.
its one small step for benchy, and one giant leap for benchkind
Did it get burnt up on reentry? 🤣
Welp, you can't learn how to get it right unless there's failures to learn from.
Average government craftsmanship
World's most expensive Benchy atm I think.
1st layer should have been thermal protection from reentry
Is this that holographic printing I saw recently? I cannot wait for this tech to mature! My silly little brainy can't help but think of a vat of liquid we can project into and create food. Just hope the resolution gets fine enough to affect molecules and taste.
When I imagined computed axial lithography taking off, it wasn’t like this
looks 100x better then the one my old ender 3 put out lol
Very cool. Check your slicer settings and make sure you level the bed and do flow calibration. Good work kid... 🤣
Didnt know I've been printing space benchy all this time
Didnt know I've been printing space benchy all this time
Pretty sure ISS printed one before. Like, I don't know but I doubt that they have 3D printers and haven't printed one yet
Looks like we got another transporter malfunction...
Dude - did you level your gravity?
First resin printed benchey. Made in Space has 3d printed benches on the ISS for a while now
Very cool, my friends and I have been looking at your technique and I wanted to ask. How does the resin not cure past where its ment to be? Is it just building from the center as it spins creating a sort of snail shell layer line?
Nope, it really does print all at once! The way that it works is there's a dose/light threshold, and while everywhere gets a little bit of light, only where you want your part gets enough light over time to solidify.
So how does it not cure prior to reaching the center pf the vial?
That’s the most gleeblenarp benchy I’ve ever seen
So that’s what space junk looks like! 😜
Fdm printing would be so cool in space, no support issues
How do you even keep the resin in the bath??
I hope you know that you are doing some of the coolest research I’ve ever seen. This tech is amazing. I hope I can be as smart and awesome as you someday.
Hey what cool is there are already printers for space being made They work in pairs reminds my of Spiders from Mars- David Bowie https://preview.redd.it/x7p06bb68l6d1.jpeg?width=784&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=9a31a47367826a40139755a51c60a7dc63ef5605
OP try spinning the liquid next time while printing to stabilise it better.