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NASA 'Emails' a Socket Wrench To the ISS

Posted by Soulskill on from the hardware-as-a-service dept.

HughPickens.com writes: "Sarah LeTrent reports at CNN that NASA just emailed the design of a socket wrench to astronauts so that they could print it out in the orbit. The ratcheting socket wrench was the first "uplink tool" printed in space, according to Grant Lowery, marketing and communications manager for Made In Space, which built the printer in partnership with NASA. The tool was designed on the ground, emailed to the space station and then manufactured where it took four hours to print out the finished product. The space agency hopes to one day use the technology to make parts for broken equipment in space and long-term missions would benefit greatly from onboard manufacturing capabilities. "I remember when the tip broke off a tool during a mission," recalls NASA astronaut TJ Creamer, who flew aboard the space station during Expedition 22/23 from December 2009 to June 2010. "I had to wait for the next shuttle to come up to bring me a new one. Now, rather than wait for a resupply ship to bring me a new tool, in the future, I could just print it."

6 of 152 comments (clear)

  1. My sockets are made of high quality steel by Todd+Palin · · Score: 3, Insightful

    I really wouldn't want to use a plastic socket on much of anything. But, why on earth was there not a decent socket set on the ISS in the first place? (pun intended)

    1. Re:My sockets are made of high quality steel by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Insightful

      Tools break. Unforeseen circumstances happen. Snobs troll slashdot.

    2. Re:My sockets are made of high quality steel by thegarbz · · Score: 3, Insightful

      I really wouldn't want to use a plastic socket on much of anything.

      Really? Because I would give my left kidney for it if having one would save my life. I don't think anyone actually sent this print up there because they don't have one. There's these things called "proof of concept".A lot of slashdot readers seem to be unfamiliar with the concept.

    3. Re:My sockets are made of high quality steel by itzly · · Score: 2, Insightful

      It's more a skimming just above the atmosphere-station.

    4. Re:My sockets are made of high quality steel by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Insightful

      They likely printed it with Titanium.

      It would however use far less energy to use a CNC machine. Laser sintering should be reserved for very complex parts that cannot be machined.

      Spontaneously regular milling in space sounds like a really bad idea to me.
      First of all the base material cost is very high in space so methods that creates large amounts of leftovers will be very expensive. Not only do you have the high cost of transporting material that you won't use, you also need to store that material.
      Then we have the problem of managing leftover particles in microgravity, you don't want a risk of those going anywhere. At that point I'm not entirely sure that you assessment that it requires less energy is correct.

  2. Re:Plastic socket wrench? by CaptQuark · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I'll bet you any amount it won't break. This is a technology demonstration and proof of concept, not a stress-to-failure type test. The main goal is to upload the build file, print it, then return it to earth to compare against the reference model. Some of the questions they might be working to answer are: Do the extrusion heads work the same way in microgravity? Do micro-bubbles form in the material without gravity to collapse them? Do wisps of hot filament drift around the build chamber without gravity to control them?

    Imagine turning an earth-bound 3D printer upside down and printing an object. What other issues does gravity alleviate that we don't know about?

    ~~