High-Level Project Summary
This project gives insight of the relevance of 3D printing in Martian environments, depending mainly on local materials, for manufacturing new items and answering to unexpected situations. Moreover, this allows to reduce mission costs by minimizing the spacecraft cargo to the items that will not be able to be printed in the planet.
Link to Final Project
Link to Project "Demo"
Detailed Project Description
In this project we stablished a list of items to manufacture arriving to Mars in a supposed exploratory expedition, taking advantage of three 3D printers able to generate tools and parts in metal, plastic, and concrete. We demonstrate the validity of this idea with the support of 3D models for basic tools, pieces, furniture and structures that may help during a one-year mission in the red planet.
Item designs
Our solution designs take in account reusability and adaptability, maximizing the usage of each piece in order to save materials, space in the habitat and time of printing. Crew members will be able to print few small tool pieces of the scarcer material and combine them with pieces of more accessible materials, getting fully functional tools. Also, with versatile furniture they could reshape the habitat distribution according to the necessities of each task or step of the mission. Furthermore, by determining design materials according to the printers’ capabilities and parts functionalities we can parallelize objects printing, being able to obtain most of the necessary parts for a specific piece of furniture at the same time, as we can see exemplified by the drawer item, combining plastic pieces with metal staples and inserting the completed piece in the furniture slots.
Replacements
We designed a wheel replacement compatible with the printing restrictions of the mission. By assembling the different pieces, the crew can build a new wheel in case of need, being similar enough in size and structure to work with the old rover and previous wheels. Along with the structure pieces we designed a chain-like system to act as wheel cover, which can also be added to old wheels, offering protection and deeper tread with small modular parts allowing fast and easy in situ repairs discarding only the damaged parts when needed. These chains can also be deployed by separating one joint, providing for a surface that allows an easy way out when wheels get stuck in the martian soil.
Items considered
Metal
Firstly, amenities such as cutlery could be printed to provide for basic living activities. Tool tips to use with the standard handle could also be generated, according to the expected requirements of a martian mission in which soil recollection may be needed, along with performing repairments of damaged pieces. It is also assumed that small tools as screws, bolts and likewise will also be printed.
Plastic
The main tool based in CO2 generated polymers for us would be the standard tool handle, which would fit all the tool tips necessary for required work. It was considered also adding a joint for different handles in order to increase temporarily the length of the tools in case of needed. This material could be great also to the storage amenities, which could be built from different parts such as the drawer we use as example, although crates with variable size could be designed to feet different necessities.
Concrete
Being the biggest printer all furniture was designed with this material, in order to make the biggest parts. With versatility still in mind, modularity is key, having adaptable size tables and chairs that can be used as storage by adding manufactured drawers. These ideas could be applied to desks or other types of furniture such as beds. It was also designed a hangar as protection for tools kept in the exterior of the habitat such as the concrete printer and the rover.
Electronics
To improve energy production and also providing entertainment, it was considered to develop an exercise bike manufactured with small printed parts and some electronics provided from the landing site.
3D models
To support our ideas and help visualize the concepts proposed we developed several 3D models with Blender and FreeCAD softwares, as examples of some of the items we considered important in a space mission of this kind. The .stl files can be found in our drive cloud through the provided URL.
Conclusion
Our project gives insight of the relevance of 3D printing in Martian environments, depending mainly on local materials, for manufacturing new items, answering to unexpected situations. Moreover, this allows to reduce mission costs by minimizing the spacecraft cargo to the items that will not be able to be printed in the planet. We hope that this project helps pave the way to the expansion of humankind throughout the galaxy by starting with our red neighbor’s colonization.
Space Agency Data
We used the reference models and images of the Perseverance rover and the wheel provided.
Hackathon Journey
We learnt about how to distribute work and focus on what is most important for the project to be able to fit in the deadlines. Also we developed our teamwork skills, specially comunication to be able to reach our companions and explain the ideas proposed.
References
Handle tool, knife and cutlery models were based on models obtained from thingiverse model database.
Handle:
- https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:5145400
Cutlery:
- https://cults3d.com/es/modelo-3d/casa/goeffel-spork-foon
Knife:
- https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:4517450/files
Tags
#3DModel, #3dPrinting, #design, #space