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NASA Makes 3-D Printed Wrench Model Available

Posted by samzenpus on from the print-your-own dept.

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.

3 of 99 comments (clear)

  1. Let's Be Honest by Frosty+Piss · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.
  2. Amazing design by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    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).

    1. Re:Amazing design by MobyDisk · · Score: 5, Funny

      I'm sure they already have a 3/8" socket set on board, so this was just a test.

      Actually they didn't. The Americans looked everywhere: they asked the Russians, Canadians, Brazilians, and Japanese, but all they could find were 9.5mm!