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NASA Makes 3-D Printed Wrench Model Available
First time accepted submitter smsiebe writes You can now download a piece of history by getting the designs for the wrench that NASA recently emailed to astronauts on the ISS. The wrench took four hours to complete and was the first "uplink tool" printed in space. You can check out a number of models and images on NASA's 3D Resources site.
I can buy Tang at the grocery store too and I don't feel particularly historic.
Taken from the label on the handle. That's not much of a wrench. I could probably tighten something to 3 in-lbs with my fingers. Nice proof of concept though.
When International Space Station Commander Barry Wilmore needed a wrench, NASA knew just what to do. They "e-mailed" him one.
They make it sound like "Woah! I need a wrench and I don't have it! What ever will I do?"
Clearly, however, this was a fully planned experiment, and it is doubtful that the wrench was used a the sole tool for some important fix. The wrench will come back with the crew and be studied in a laboratory as I'm sure was planned from the beginning.
Impressive none the less, but let's be honest here.
If you want news from today, you have to come back tomorrow.
The actual design of the wrench is fantastic; it has two moving parts that are printed inside the grip, so it comes out of the printer fully assembled and ready to be used (or not used).
So, those female astronauts need some help every now and then. Do astronauts have sex in space? If not, couldn't we just upload some dildo IGS or STEP models for the female astronauts to be able to "utilize?" It would be pretty hilarious in the Orbiter hearing all of that glop-glop-glop-ooooh-glop-gloosh-aaaah amidst the dead silence of outer space.
Another pointless activity, right up there with studying the mating habits fo shrimp in zero G. ISS is a phenomenal waste of money. Russia is a criminal state. End the damn program and lets get back to the moon with SLS and lay claim to it before the Chinese do.
an ill wind that blows no good
So THAT'S where the CIA gets their untraceable $5 wrenches.
captcha: corrupts
This is funny
If you know you are limited to a certain material, in some instances you can modify the part design to do the intended job with that material. In some instances you absolutely need a certain surface hardness or thermal properties or whatever which prevents this. But you can redesign a wrench for requisite stiffness and strength, it just won't look like a steel wrench and might be too bulky and unwieldy to use in certain places.
Left MS Windows for Linux Mint and never looked back!
Vote for Bernie in 2016!
Your local hardware store sells complete wrenches made of real metal! for 1 or 2 dollars.
If NASA had used a 3D scanner to scan in an existing wrench, instead of designing a new one, then they could claim, in some rudimentary way, to have deployed the first instance of a star-trek style transporter. They still can.
can you stick your finger into square hole and turn like that though.
anyways, maybe they only need just that and only that.
the wrench looks dull if you look at just the image but actually it has a spinner/oneway lock(dunno english name for that) inside, that you can not see in the pictures - the mechanism is printed in place. I was checking it out because there's the on circle on the surface that shows there's something funny going on. also, for one piece functionality print, your 3d printer better be calibrated correctly to print this one out.
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
the machine and raw materials weighed and cost significantly more than just putting a 12.99 socket set in the fucking toolbox
BUT 3D PRINTING RARRRWWARRROOT!
stupid
LOL. You remember that FEMALE 'astronaut' (passenger, more like), who managed to let a whole bag of tools just float away in space? Due to being a self-obsessed, incompetent WOMAN? (Since no MAN has ever lost a whole bag of tools in space.)
Waste your PLA.
"If any question why we died, Tell them because our fathers lied."
Printed on Christmas Eve and showed it off to the family at Christmas. They were impressed. https://www.reddit.com/r/3Dpri...
am i the only one thinking, this is some sort of publicity stunt by NASA ?
I have nothing against 3D printing, but I'm intelligent: the right tool for the job
I mean, they really didn't have an adjustable wrench or the right tool ?
"Made in Space"
A plastic wench? Must not need to be really tight.
Get off Slashdot, you bible thumping coneservitive.
It was not really a useful wrench. It was a publicity gimmick. 3 in-lbs is finger tight. You don't need a wrench for that.
The design was poor- torque applied to the socket would apply shearing force to the square post on the wrench and tear the layers apart. There was a single pawl engaging the ratchet wheel which means that tiny little bit of plastic had all the force applied to it. Also, the ratchet only turned in one direction- tightening a nut but not loosening. After a relatively few turns, the pawl started to slip and the wrench became even more useless. The pawl was difficult to print because of the tiny print area on the printer's bed. There wasn't much helping it stick to the bed. I had to restart the print a few times before I got it to stick.
A smarter way to make a wrench would have been to have multiple pawls engaging the ratchet wheel to reduce force applied to any one of them, and there should have been a square hole in the ratchet wheel and a second, square cross section part to fit in the hole printed laying on its side. You would put the square peg into the hole and it would be long enough to allow a socket to be put on either side of the wrench- one side for tightening and the other for loosening a nut.
NASA really needs to have contests for this sort of thing. They'd get even more publicity with that.