NASA’s follow-on to the successful ICESat mission will employ a neverbefore ROLAND DG RANGE OFFERS TOP QUALITY ENGINEERING SOLUTIONS 18 April 2016 3 D P R I N T I N G Aarque Group are proud suppliers of the Roland DG range of precision engravers, 3D modelling solutions, impact printers and other accessories for engineering solutions. Roland’s subtractive rapid-prototyping milling machines produce form models faster than any 3D printer on the market and cost significantly less, while producing precision prototypes out of a wider variety of non-proprietary materials - making it easier to create prototypes, including UV resistance, bending strength, surface hardness and electrical conductivity. For industrial marking applications, Roland’s range of impact printers deliver precision results at a fraction of the cost of traditional systems and use a durable diamond-tipped stylus to imprint a wide variety of hard surfaces. For over 60 years Aarque Group has been offering Kiwi businesses the latest hi-tech machinery from all the top brands, all under one roof. Come by their stand at EMEX and see how they can engineer a solution for your business. EN028 flown technique for determining the topography of ice sheets and the thickness of sea ice, but that won’t be the only first for this mission. Slated for launch in 2018, NASA’s Ice, Cloud and land Elevation Satellite-2 (ICESat-2) also will carry an electrostatically dissipative Fused Deposition Modelling (FDM) or ‘stand-based’ 3D printed part made of polyetherketoneketone (PEKK), a material that has never been used in 3D manufacturing, let alone flown in space. “This is a first for this material,” says Craig Auletti, lead production engineer on ICESat-2’s only instrument, the Advanced Topographic Laser Altimeter System (ATLAS) now being built at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. The part is a bracket that supports the instrument’s fibre-optic cables. Instrument developers chose PEKK because it’s strong, but perhaps more important, it’s electrostatically dissipative — that is, it reduces the build-up of static electricity to protect electrostatically sensitive devices. It also produces very little outgassing, a chemical process similar to what happens when plastics and other materials release gas, producing, for example, the ‘new car smell’ in vehicles. In a vacuum or under heated conditions, these outgassed contaminants can condense on and harm optical devices and thermal radiators, significantly degrading instrument performance. Although 3D or additive manufacturing is used to create a variety of products, so far, it remains a rare occurrence in spaceflight applications. In fact, the electrostatically dissipative PEKK bracket is believed to be the only strand-based 3D manufactured part to be flown in a spaceflight instrument, said Oren Sheinman, the ATLAS mechanical systems engineer NASA Goddard. Three-dimensional parts printed of Ultem 9085, which are not e l e c t r o s t a t i c a l l y d i s s i p a t i v e , were produced and flown on the International Space Station by the NASA Ames Research Center’s Synchronized Position Hold, Engage, Reorient, Experimental Satellites (SPHERES) programme. Additive or 3D manufacturing is attractive because it offers a fast, low-cost alternative to traditional manufacturing. W i t h a d d i t i v e manufacturing, a computer-operated device literally prints a solid object, layer by layer, using a high-power optic laser that melts and fuses powdered materials in precise locations using a 3D CAD model. “Had we manufactured this part classically, it would have taken six to eight weeks. We got it in two NASA EQUIPS SPACECRAFT WITH UNIQUE 3D MANUFACTURED PART
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