Hi, this is Wayne again with a topic “First 3D printer in space”.
My name is mike chen and i’m one of the co-founders of made in space. What we’re doing is we’re creating the first 3d printer that is able to operate in space and later this year, we’re going to be launching the first 3d printer on the international space station. We’Re going to be able to literally just upload a file to the space station in a matter of minutes and instantly start printing an object there. It’S initially a what’s called a technology demonstration and then it’s going to go on to producing actual functional, useful parts that astronauts will use in space everything from little tools that they can use to pull off various objectives, to experiments to even components of entire satellites.
When we first started the company, we actually identified that it was such a good idea to do 3d, printing in space that we just wanted to get started. We got as many 3d printers as we could all the different types of 3d printers that exist. We started flying them on these aircraft that actually simulate microgravity for these short bursts of time.
After hundreds of these flights, we finally ended up with our own design, actually for a completely new type of 3d printer, it’s designed from the ground up, it’s our own technology. It’S not only capable of printing in microgravity, but it also addresses a number of other big issues that happen with 3d printing as well. So it’s been in the news, a lot lately that 3d printers are dangerous. They have toxic off-gassing.
Actually, if you stand near any of these printers here – and you just take a whiff it – you might even get a headache. But we found this out very quickly because we had to test the environmental impact of our printer in nasa’s test facilities right out the gate, because the air on the space station. Obviously it’s recirculated, so you can’t contaminate it with anything or the astronauts will die. So we ended up having to develop the world’s safest, 3d printer as well, that actually has zero emissions. So it’s the microgravity there’s the safety there. There’S the remote operations, there’s really about 10 or 15 technologies that we actually had to develop to get a 3d printer. That works in space. You .