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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.
Yeah but now you can pay out the ass for a 3d printer and download a wrench and wait 4 hours to get your wrench.
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.
Gasp... The future... It is here... And the game, it has changed. All the games, actually. Now that we can 3D print wrenches in the upper atmosphere, I am, as I type, packing my steamer trunk for Mars!
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).
Yeah but now you can pay out the ass for a 3d printer and download a wrench and wait 4 hours to get your wrench.
I'd be the first to make snide comments about some of the 3d printing hype (some of it, the sort that fails to answer "and we wouldn't do this with machine tools why exactly?", there are a number of genuinely impressive applications, albeit mostly involve additional finishing steps or the really expensive printers); but 'earth orbit' is one of those places where I can imagine being willing to wait for printing rather than ordering from harbor freight and waiting for shipping.
A problem better solved by standardizing fasteners, of course; but if somebody has already opened that can of worms for you, and you need an oddball tool in a space and shipping constrained environment, I can think of worse fates than using a plastic one.
So THAT'S where the CIA gets their untraceable $5 wrenches.
captcha: corrupts
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.
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To feel historic you must use the Tang to wash down the package freeze-dried ice cream you bought at a museum..
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.
Cost to get $1 metal wrench to space station: $10,000-$20,000. Oh, and you have to wait until the next launch, which might be weeks off. Developing a capability to make your own tools in space: priceless.
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$10,000-$20,000, same as the first one. It currently costs about $10,000 per pound to get anything to low Earth orbit.. Doesn't matter if it is a wrench or a can of ham salad or toilet paper - $10,000 per lb. You have to put the thing on a pricey rocket to get it to orbit. If you go to Mars, things get even more expensive.
This work that they are doing on the "Irrelevant Space Stopgap" is the stuff that they need to figure out before we can get to Mars or beyond. We have to sort out parts and tools and make sure that the astronauts can get their hands on what they need to get the job done and go to these places. Yes, it's a lot of seemingly basic and mundane crap, but it needs to be done and it is being done on the ISS today. There isn't a Tractor Supply on Phobos (not to my knowledge, anyway).
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I can buy Tang at the grocery store too and I don't feel particularly historic.
An .stl file for Tang ought to be interesting.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
Didn't get that model of the Enterprise for Christmas, did we?
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
All the games, actually.
I'm looking forward to printing all the fantasy chess pieces I couldn't afford in the game shop when I was lee lad.
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
> Going to the Moon was a one-shot stunt with no practical uses.
Ah yes, if only there were primitive moon-tribes with caverns of gold for us to bring back...
And technically, it was a nine-shot stunt!
Waste your PLA.
"If any question why we died, Tell them because our fathers lied."
I'm looking forward to printing all the fantasy chess pieces I couldn't afford in the game shop when I was lee lad.
You were the layer of yeast on the bottom of unfiltered beer bottles?
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
Printed on Christmas Eve and showed it off to the family at Christmas. They were impressed. https://www.reddit.com/r/3Dpri...
you could just give the money directly to engineers and scientists to invent cool stuff
Have you ever actually worked with R&D engineers and scientists? They don't convert money into cool stuff. They convert cool problems into cool stuff, given sufficient resources to allow solving the given cool problem.
Museum?? They sell it at outdoor stores in the camping and hiking sections with brand names now. No novelties there any more. And yes, just like at the museum (COSI in Columbus Ohio) , i had to try it. Not bad.
Publicity might have a bit to do with it but remember that endeavor mission which they lost the tool bag and people watch it burn up on reentry?
Mistakes can and has happened. Its a particularly challenging work enviroment usually performed by novices on the particular application of repair with distractions all around. There is likely a practical application for it also.
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.
Cost to get the material for the 3D-printer is going to be the same.
True, but if you can recycle the materials, you actually get to reutilize materials over and over again vs. launching a new batch from the ground. Part breaks? Toss it in the hopper and print a new one.
Also note that, for very long term exploration, the use of local materials is also being studied. Think concrete on other planets, that sort of thing.
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