by General Fabb Researchers from several US institutions
including NASA recently published a paper describing their
experiment in "Lunar 3D Printing". No, they weren't actually ON
the Moon. Instead they produced synthetic lunar soil (called
"Regolith" by scientists) and attempted to use it as material in
a 3D printing process. The process used was "LENS", or Laser
Engineering Net Shaping, a technology from Optomec that we wrote
about last year. A very high-power laser fuses metal powder at
the instant its deposited on a surface. The purpose of the
experiment was to demonstrate the feasibility of directly using
lunar soil to build structures and components, with the obvious
benefit of avoiding the costly shipment of heavy metal feedstock
from Planet Earth. In this video, Dr. Amit Bandyopadhyay
enthusiastically explains how it works. Did the experiment work?
According to the paper's findings: A combination of laser
parameters resulting in a 2.12 J/mm2 laser energy appeared to be
ideal for generating a melt pool