Additive Manufacturing at NASA (Part 1): AM Radio #51

Additive Manufacturing Media editors have had the chance to visit three different NASA facilities: the Goddard Space Flight Center, Jet Propulsion Laboratory and Marshall Space Flight Center. Pete Zelinski and Stephanie Hendrixson learned and reported on how 3D printing is being used to fulfill NASA missions through parts like a generatively designed bracket, lightweight titanium lattices and a multimaterial thrust chamber made with two different processes. But where do these parts fit within NASA's broader mission, and what is the role of additive manufacturing at NASA? In this episode, part 1 of a 2-part series, Pete and Stephanie discuss what it's like to visit NASA and the observations they gleaned from being on site.

Subscribe to The BuildUp (link above) or to AM Radio on your favorite podcast platform and join us for Part 2, featuring AM Radio cohost and NASA system design innovator Dr. Tim Simpson.

Transcript

Stephanie Hendrixson  00:07

Over the last 12 months, we at Additive Manufacturing Media have had a chance to visit three different NASA sites and learn how the organization is using additive for specific applications, and how they're thinking about this technology more broadly. In this episode, the first of our two part series will share what we've learned 3D printing for space up next.

Fiona Lawler  00:32

This episode of AM Radio is brought to you by The BuildUp, a twice weekly newsletter from Additive Manufacturing Media featuring short articles on the latest applications in AM that you won't find anywhere else. Find the URL in our show notes to sign up and join our growing reader community.

Stephanie Hendrixson  00:52

Welcome to AM Radio, the show where we tune into what's happening in additive manufacturing. My name is Stephanie Hendrixson. I am joined today in the studio by Pete Zelinski.

Peter Zelinski  01:00

Hi, Stephanie.

Stephanie Hendrixson  01:00

Hi, Pete. And thank you for joining me for this episode. I'm really excited about this one because we are going to get to talk about space, and 3D printing and how it all goes together. Over the last 12 months or so we've had the chance to visit three different NASA facilities. So you and I have been to NASA Goddard, we've been to JPL, the Jet Propulsion Lab, and the Marshall Space Flight Center. Today, we're just going to talk about the different ways that those facilities are using additive manufacturing the ways that NASA overall is thinking about additive and some of the lessons that we've learned by being able to visit these places.

Peter Zelinski  01:37

It's been so interesting and exciting and fun and mind opening. Shout out to our friend Tim Simpson, who began the process of introductions that ultimately opened the door to giving us the chance to visit those different NASA sites. Yeah. And it all worked out that way. Within the course of a year, we were at these three major NASA facilities, all leaning into additive manufacturing, supporting its development, but using it in different ways. And NASA's role and footprint across like this, this big broad space we call additive manufacturing has been really interesting to see. Yeah.

Stephanie Hendrixson  02:17

And so you mentioned Tim Simpson. He's been a collaborator and has appeared on this podcast, we're actually going to have him back in the second part of this two part episode to talk about kind of the insider's view, like what he's observed actually working as part of the NASA organization. But to just kind of get us started, we went to these three different facilities kind of with three similar but different missions. Do you want to just recap the reasons that we went to these different places?

Peter Zelinski  02:43

Yeah, each one was working on a project that caught our attention involving additive manufacturing, in each case, different projects, different reasons for using additive. Ultimately, each of these projects led to an episode of The Cool Parts Show. So we've detailed all of this and we'll put links in the show description. The first one was Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland. And our host was Ryan McClelland and and he was involved in trying to get the lightest mass possible for this, this undertaking called the EXCITE mission. And EXCITE is an acronym, and it has to do with a balloon to carry a telescope to the very top of the Earth's atmosphere where it can stare at exoplanets and, and learn things about them in part, for example, by using spectroscopy to measure the constituent elements of the atmosphere of other planets. So he was working on 3D printing for brackets to hold sensitive equipment for this mission that had to be rigid enough, for example, to survive when this thing dropped, finished its mission and dropped back down to earth. That was Goddard. Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California, different project also had to do with crashing back to Earth. In an even more intense scenario, they were working on the Mars sample return mission, how to pick up rocks from Mars and get them intact back to Earth in a craft that has to land by crashing in probably the Utah desert. So our hosts there Ryan Watkins was one of the team members who's working on 3D printed lattice structures that were both very very very light but also very capable of protecting this payload as as it crashed after this long long trip back from Mars, and then Marshall Space Flight Center in Alabama. Our host there was Paul Gradl. And he is involved in the effort there to develop and prove out altogether different ways of manufacturing propulsion systems for rockets and and The propulsion system is the core of what a rocket is. And their project, it's called RAMPT, that's another acronym. But it has to do with bringing in additive manufacturing as a way to realize these dramatic savings in lead time and in assembly work through all the part consolidation. We saw there a thrust chamber assembly assembly in quotes, because it was basically one big solid intricate piece made through additive manufacturing. And as it happens, made through two different additive processes, starting with laser powder, bed fusion, and then directed energy deposition on top of that, to complete the form.

Stephanie Hendrixson  05:40

Each one of those parts that you mentioned, Pete, there's an episode of The Cool Parts Show about it. And we will link to that in the show notes. And I didn't realize it until you were sort of running through the list just then. But yeah, two parts that are all about crashing, and like impact resistance to having to fall back to Earth. And then one part that is about getting us out of Earth's atmosphere. So each one of these parts, each one of these applications for 3D printing is very different, requires a different way of applying the technology. So with the EXCITE mission brackets, a lot of the reason to use additive was for the pairing with generative design and like trying to arrive at the most optimal bracket design as quickly as possible, which turns out to be this kind of like crazy looking geometry that is really only possible to make with additive manufacturing. With JPL, it's all about producing the optimal lattice that can be crushed up to a certain point and ensure that all of these samples are going to return to Earth intact. And then with the RAMPT project, this is these were really large parts. The one that we filmed with was a scaled down version of the really large thrust chamber assembly that they ultimately want to make, that's going to be like eight feet tall, 10 feet wide. And here, it's really mostly, like you said about assembly consolidation. And so NASA isn't trying to solve the same problem over and over, they're applying additive to solve different problems across all these different missions, all of these different specific parts.

Peter Zelinski  07:11

You said EXCITE and RAMPT again. Mars sample return is the only one of these missions that has a clear name. Can you give Goddard's EXCITE mission, the RAMPT project that involves Marshall, can you give those acronyms?

Stephanie Hendrixson  07:23

Yeah, so EXCITE stands for Exoplanet Climate Infrared TElescope. There's no no E word on the end of that, because they're counting the E and telescope as the E in excite.

Peter Zelinski  07:35

Arguably cheating a little bit.

Stephanie Hendrixson  07:37

A little bit, but it works. And then RAMPT stands for Rapid Analysis and Manufacturing Propulsion Technology. 

Peter Zelinski  07:44

So before we get into the additive manufacturing, how they're using it, how NASA is supporting it, and there's there's a lot to say about all of that. But I'd be interested in hearing your perspective, we visited a NASA facility. How did you experience that?

Stephanie Hendrixson  07:56

This is the question that people have asked me the most when I when I talk about being able to visit NASA, everyone wants to know like, how hard is it to get in? And like what is that experience like? And for us as representatives of the media, like there are doors that open but there are also challenges that come along with that. And so getting access to these NASA facilities, like I think we always had to provide some details like names, birthdates, documents in advance. Every time that we showed up to one of these facilities, we'd have to start at like a badging office of some sort. I think in all three cases, we made some kind of wrong turn on the way in like, never got to the right building on the first try. It is what it is, it happens. And then we would go through a process of like getting an official badge. Usually it was like red, it said press or something on it so that people knew we were visitors. We were escorted the entire time we were on the campus. But the thing that I was really surprised by was despite all of these sorts of hoops to jump through, like all the steps that you have to take to get on to a NASA campus. Everybody, once you're there is really, really open and excited to talk about what they're doing. And to show you what they're working on.

Peter Zelinski  09:07

That's really true. Like it like everything was up for grabs. Anything we saw or pointed out or wanted to talk about. There was lots to say about it. And NASA is ultimately an engineering organization and engineering in process can be kind of messy and kind of out there and a lot of the work that goes on at the NASA Space Center. It is like that. There's there's lots of to see lots to get curious about lots to talk about lots that looks very incomplete and tangled and disassembled and provisionally the NASA people are engaged in this technological exploration that has to do with exploration of space, they're explorers, and that sort of could be felt in the culture of all of them. These places, there is the openness that you describe. There is this real optimism to this real optimism about what will be possible as a result of the work they're doing, even though they are, like by the nature of their mission, taking on some very difficult and certainly unprecedented things.

Stephanie Hendrixson  10:21

Yeah, I have to say everyone that we met or interacted with at NASA seemed like they're having the time of their lives. Like I'm a little bit jealous having having met all these people, and having had the chance to see like, how excited they are to be at work.

Peter Zelinski  10:34

I thought about that. And I wonder if the experience of NASA doesn't self-select for that over time. Because if you think about how they work, and where their funding comes from their funding comes from ultimately, elected officials deciding how much or how little resource should go to these undertakings, and how do you value something like that, to my mind, these very big knowledge, advancing searches, that is a legitimate and wonderful expenditure of of public money, but people have to make decisions about how much public money goes goes there, and those decisions are subjected to wax and wane and, and go up and down. And from inside NASA, it must be very unpredictable, you can see things change on a dime, maybe I'm imagining but I wonder if you have to be excited like that and optimistic like that and positive like that, to not be affected by a culture and environment and and support for the work you're doing that is subject to some human whims from time to time.

Stephanie Hendrixson  11:44

Yeah, subject to human whims that might be changing on a month to month or a year to year basis. Meanwhile, you have to have this really like long-term vision in the back of your head because these missions that they're working on, take so long to put together or so long to come to fruition. So the the Mars sample return is supposed to be launching to Mars in 2027. That means the lander that we saw in progress, like the the lattice that's going to go into that lander is not coming back to Earth until 2033. Like you have to have this huge, immense timeline in mind at the same time that you're dealing with, you know, maybe budget constraints or just changing circumstances here on Earth.

Peter Zelinski  12:25

That is really well said. And we felt that and encountered that it is hard not to admire someone who is committedly pouring their energy into something that they know is not going to reach fulfillment until they are much older, and maybe even at the end of their career. Yeah, I guess there's one other little thing about what it's like to visit these facilities. It was the same with all three of them. And it took me by surprise a little bit, even though it shouldn't have. But NASA is working on the leading edge of what is possible with spacecraft related technology working on the leading edge. But they have been working that way for decades. This is a long established institution. And each of these spaceflight centers we visited has been in place for quite a while. So the result of that is it's this very future focused, technology oriented organization. And yet the facilities are older facilities sometimes and sort of have that feel to it. And it's it is a neat tension between old and new and part of the vibe of NASA that's really appealing. So to me, Generation X. So it reminds me of going to school, because I was growing up after the baby boom had passed through and there were way fewer of us. So schools were older and closing down as I was going through them. And it's like that public institutions are in sort of timeworn and careworn facilities like kind of like the environment I understand and to see this creative work being done in these spaces that were maybe built for one purpose, and over time redirected to another purpose. Like if you want to lean into the feel of what it's like to visit a NASA facility. That's part of it, too.

Stephanie Hendrixson  14:15

Yeah, I would say the the reference point that I thought of, in all of these cases is college campus, like Goddard and Marshall are a little bit more spread out. And so you don't necessarily see a lot of pedestrians walking around. But it sort of has that feel that each one of these buildings is serving a different purpose, doing something different. And then JPL was a little bit more compact. Like we wrote a golf cart around to get between locations. And there were more people out walking around, and it just kind of has that, that feel that there's all these people in the same place doing something to advance spaceflight or space research or what we know about space. But at the same time, they're all kind of working on their own agendas. They're all attached to specific missions. They've all got their own specialty that they're working on within that context. All right, let's take a quick break. And then when we come back, I want to talk about some observations and some things that we learned from being on the ground visiting these NASA facilities.

Fiona Lawler  15:12

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Stephanie Hendrixson  15:52

And we're back. We've been talking about our experience visiting three different NASA facilities and some additive manufacturing stories that we've been able to tell. But I want to go big picture now and talk more about the big observations that we came to, after visiting these three different locations. So I want to bring this back to additive manufacturing, and kind of how we saw that play out on these different visits. And it was different in every case. So at Goddard, we did not see 3D printing there. The parts we were there to talk about had been manufactured somewhere else. At JPL, we saw their metal additive lab, which I still believe is maybe the most additive equipment I've ever seen crammed into the smallest possible space. Totally. It was it was kind of amazing and kind of a feat of Tetris. And then at Marshall, we saw much more additive capacity, different a couple of different lab spaces where they had a whole variety of machines, we saw plastics and metals, we saw laser powder bed fusion, and DED, kind of all within the same area.

Peter Zelinski  16:54

That's right, they had different missions they were working on. And even the organization's the teams that our hosts were a part of were charged with different kinds of things that affected what they were thinking about in the ways that they explored and developed part producing technologies. Goddard, at least, Ryan McClelland's role at Goddard, certainly it focused on kind of unique single-use missions. And so there wouldn't be a lot of repetitive production involved, it was more like finding the way to make the thing as economically as possible. But that met a whole lot of potentially conflicting requirements for this part. Ryan McClelland showed us parts that he got from Protolabs. And he also showed us parts that he got from 3D Systems, he was basically using different contractors to get 3D printed parts to the extent that he chose to use 3D printing. And there wasn't universally that I think we'll end up talking about that a little bit, too. But JPL was even more single-use single mission focus. But the difference was, it wasn't just obtaining unique parts. But it was also finding the way to solve very strange problems. And the work that JPL is involved in, it seemed to argue for having capacity internally, that it would be very different to work with a supplier because you don't know what you don't know. And so there's a very iterative process where they need to be hands on and within the organization. It was the opposite with Marshall, because Marshall is trying to figure out better ways to get spacecraft produced. And they're very interested in seeing these ideas propagate into commercial industry and to the suppliers they work with, to the extent that it's part of their mission that they do not do any part making internally unless there's no reasonable way to to avoid it. The components they develop the manufacturing, they do, it's done in conjunction with and and as business for commercial suppliers.

Stephanie Hendrixson  19:14

Yeah. And I think that last point that you touched on, that is a lesson that I learned, and I don't think it really sunk in until we got to Marshall until we get to the third of these visits. But NASA has additive capacity spread across several of its facilities. That is not for production, it is mostly for qualification and just we need to learn about this process so that we can communicate it to our suppliers.

Peter Zelinski  19:39

I agree with that. I agree with how you said, didn't understand that till the third of these visits. We're focused on the space exploration aspect of what NASA is all about. But NASA actually has a variety of different charges and purposes and aims that all harmonize with one another and advance same technology for American industry and American manufacturing is part of what they do. And so looking for ways to bring in and work with and support commercial industry, it's how they think about going about what they do.

Stephanie Hendrixson  20:13

Yeah. And so we've kind of become accustomed to these new stories about the commercial space sector and hearing about, like, what Blue Origin, and SpaceX, and all of these other companies are doing. And like sort of at face value, it might seem like those companies are in competition with NASA, or they're doing different things, or they have diverging aims. And actually, that's not true. They're they're working together, they're collaborating, they're trying to solve the same problems. And NASA is actively working with a lot of those companies to mutual benefit.

Peter Zelinski  20:42

To mutual benefit. And NASA, because of the mission that it has, is, to an extent, set free of commercial profit and loss considerations. And that gives it the freedom to undertake some developments that ultimately prove very useful, and even enabling to some commercial enterprises in the space sector. And I think of, for example, alloy development, even the development of of quality standards falls in that category.

Stephanie Hendrixson  21:22

Yeah, so we actually talked with Tim Simpson about this in our qualification episode, but the NASA 6030 standard, is a set of guidelines that NASA developed and released regarding parts for space. But it's something that I keep hearing other manufacturers refer to whether or not they're serving the space industry, it's become this kind of touchstone where, you know, if you're in a space that maybe doesn't have its own standards, yet, if it's good enough for NASA, maybe it's good enough for you too.

Peter Zelinski  21:51

A standalone business would not have the buffer or resources to lean into developing and circulating a standards body for for qualifying a type of material or type of parts. But NASA can do that. And it needs to do that. And as a result, there is this curious interesting side effect of that, which is this role of maybe unexpected importance that NASA plays in additive manufacturing overall, because they happen to have some standards that are working really well and can be borrowed and fitted to other types of applications.

Stephanie Hendrixson  22:31

One of the things that was interesting to me is that like by virtue of becoming kind of a standards organization like that is changing, also the way that NASA thinks about its own additive capacity. So at Marshall, we saw laser powder bed fusion machines in this this lab space, almost entirely Concept Laser single-laser powder bed fusion machines, because that's kind of where NASA started, I think with that technology, single lasers are much easier to work out qualifications for. And so that's what they've been working with for a long time. But not too long before we visited, they had just installed their first Vello 3D machine because they're seeing their suppliers start to adopt multi laser machines, they want to be able to make use of that capacity. And the way to get there is, well, we've got to understand it. And we've got to be able to qualify it before we can hand work over to those suppliers.

Peter Zelinski  23:25

Yeah, more of that synergy between NASA and commercial industry. Single lasers predominate within NASA because multiple lasers to lasers for lasers, that's more for production, the single laser system that's one laser means fewer variables, easier to control in an experimental or qualification setting. But yeah, it has commercial industry really starts leaning on the multi laser systems, then yeah, to be in communication with them and helpful to them. NASA needs that too. I think one thing I'm hearing in sort of the tone of this conversation so far is like that things are utterly loose for NASA. And they have all of this freedom. And it's actually not like that, because they wrestle with constraints that are very demanding all the more so because they're particular to what NASA is trying to do. So I think of mass budget, like that phrase came up from time to time. And so NASA, of course, has cost constraints. Everything's got a budget, they're trying to do what they do within $1 target and they're trying to reduce the cost of what they do. But that said, there is not the same cost pressure as a production environment say like, that's not the main hurdle. The main hurdle very frequently is how little weight a structure or system is allowed. I would have, for reasons I think are probably fairly obvious to everyone listening to this, that more weight in a spacecraft means way more propulsion and way more fuel needed and way more costs. So everything about spacecraft argues for getting as light as possible. And that can lead to design requirements for certain parts where the mass limitation is just crazy, this bracket can only weigh this many grams, and you've got to do everything you can, including maybe some some very obscure or difficult manufacturing steps to try to get this part to that lightness.

Stephanie Hendrixson  25:40

I think the thing that I walked away from from all of these visits is just this sense that NASA is not doing additive any favors, like they're not interested in 3D printing, because it's like a cool new thing. And it's something they now have access to. So they want to play around with it. In every case, every one of these cool parts that we've covered, they had another way that they could have gotten to make these things. So we talked about the brackets for the excite mission. And actually, as part of that conversation, we saw a bracket that was also generatively designed that had been five axis machine. So it was not 3D printed, there was a way to get close to that geometry without it. With the sample return mission, Ryan showed us some samples of some metal foam, which is just available off the shelf. There are some some limitations there, and some reasons why they didn't want to use it for sample return, but there was a more conventional option that NASA could have chosen. And for the RAMPT project, we're looking at these giant thrust chamber assemblies, which in the past have been literal assemblies of hundreds of parts that had to all come together. And so NASA is using additive is choosing additive for these different projects, because they're gaining some other benefit from it, whether it is speed of development, whether it is lightweighting in service of that mass budget, whether it is just really consolidating the assembly and consolidating the manufacturing steps. And I just think back to our very first visit, when we went to Goddard, we did a lot of filming in their testing facility. And so we had these brackets kind of arrayed on this big vibration platform. And then if you remember, like we walked down the hallway a little bit, and they took us into the acoustic testing chamber where there was like a giant speaker built into the wall where literally, they are playing the recordings of rocket launchers to test the frequencies and make sure that parts are going to endure a rocket launch. And it just really sunk in at that moment, that additive for NASA, it's not special, it's going to be held to similar standards of any other parts that they're going to send a space and they're not trying to artificially inflate its importance or put it onto missions where it doesn't belong. And you know, for all of its optimism as an organization for all of the optimism of the people involved. They're very pragmatic when it comes to what gets 3D printed and what doesn't.

Peter Zelinski  28:01

NASA is so over additive. It's not novel at all. It's something that they have confronted and explored for a long, long time now. You said NASA isn't doing additive any favors. What I flashed on when you said that is years ago, there's a spacecraft that was launched and it went to Jupiter, the Juno spacecraft, right? It was assembled and created at a moment where the possibility of making functional metal components through 3D printing was new and novel. And there were some brackets added to that spacecraft that were made through electron beam melting. And so electron beam melted parts have been to Jupiter. But if you look at those parts, and we reported on this, and we'll put a link in the show description too but if you look at these parts, you would say yeah, those didn't have to be 3D printed that moment was an example of NASA doing additive a favor additive was brand new all those years ago. NASA is over additive now and and doesn't need to use additive. It doesn't feel compelled to use it. And just as you said, some of these applications we explored additive wasn't the first choice like like JPL was looking at varieties of aluminum foam that could it could use as protection. And there were various reasons we get into why that wasn't quite going to work and it needed to be a 3D printing solution. Instead, NASA isn't doing any favors for additive, but as a result of that, it is really finding the extent and scope and variety of applications where additive really, really, really makes sense like at NASA is helping us to discover all of these applications where What has been conceived and imagined it's only possible and realizable because of additive manufacturing and NASA is helping us get there because NASA is perfectly willing to rely on any conventional or established solution first, if that's what can do the job.

Stephanie Hendrixson  30:18

Alright, I think that's it for today's episode, you can find links to those Cool Parts Show episodes, as well as everything else that we talked about in the show notes. And remember, this is just part one of two. In our next episode of AM Radio, we're going to bring back our guest host, Dr. Tim Simpson, who has worked as a NASA fellow and get the inside scoop about how the organization is using thinking about implementing additive manufacturing. So make sure to subscribe to a AM Radio wherever you get your podcast to make sure you see part two in your feed. Thanks so much for listening.

Peter Zelinski  30:49

AM Radio is recorded with help from Austin Grogan. The show is edited by Jodee McElfresh and Stephanie Hendrixson. Our artwork is by Kate Schrand. AM Radio and Additive Manufacturing Media are products of Gardner Business Media located in Cincinnati, Ohio. I'm Pete Zelinski. Thanks for listening.