Someone’s humor switch is broken…

Let’s fab a new one!

The reprap obvisouly is not the ideal machine for the ISS, but having rapid prototyping capabilities or small CNC tools would have obvious usefullness. Stop bringing new experiments from earth, BUILD new ones instead ! You still need raw materials but that would be an interesting step.

The NASA used to financed research on Von Neumann probes and self-replicating devices. I wish they continued some fundamental researches that are only remotely connected to space exploration.

so are they suggesting we print a new office chair or a new [Mike]?

NASA’s still on it. But with metal: http://www.nasa.gov/topics/aeronautics/features/electron_beam.html

For long term manned missions, it’d be nice to be able to make a part in case of failure.

Also, you can custom make alloys during the manufacture process.

>I wonder if true zero g would affect the density of the extruded material.

Likely not enough to be noticed.

“NASA’s still on it. But with metal.”

That is likely because they (and the rest of industry) realized that plastic, while nice for ‘prototyping’, is basically useless.

“That is likely because they (and the rest of industry) realized that plastic, while nice for ‘prototyping’, is basically useless.”

Pretty much, yeah. The polycarb stuff from the pro FDM machines can be used for light duty assembly tools. But there are very few cases where it’d justify the cost of the machine for that application alone.

In space, vacuum-coating things with metal is trivial. Plus, RepRap is not limited to plastics – that’s just mostly what we work with for convenience and because we have a pathetic budget.

I actually started down the RepRap path when I realised that the closed environmental life support system I was designing needed to be self-repairing.

Vik :v)

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@Jack : I remember seeing that also. They had footage of it forming building walls [in the desert I think?]. I remember them focusing on the transition from one layer to another for some reason.

Synthesizing plastic parts (instead of metal) would have two key advantages over most structural metals in space applications for two reasons. First, it takes less energy to melt most plastics than most metals because they melt at lower temperatures and have lower heat conductivity. Energy is pretty scarce in space.

Second, the raw materials and resulting synthesized plastic parts are about an order of magnitude lighter than metals. In space missions, mass is everything.

Even if I had already committed to FDM metal parts, I’d still want to have the capability to synthesize plastic parts (preferably with the same device, of course) because it would be such a huge win with every opportunity to use it.