NASA 3D Printing Process Animation Challenge - Electron Beam Freeform Fabrication - Sarah Halabieh & Mingfei (Doris) Ye

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NASA Challenge: Human Rated Spacecraft 3D Printing Process AnimationBy Sarah Halabieh and Mingfei (Doris) YeThere are two main design components in this project - Electron Beam Freeform Fabrication (EBFF) for manufacturing the Orion pressure vessel structure, and applying additive manufacturing decomposition technology for heat shield protection to the Orion base. We chose the EBFF method for its versatility and adaptivity for various working environment, either in a vaccum or ambient conditions. It has also been researched extensively by NASA, hence it is a compatible technology for this application.There are two robot arms moving on a circular track. Each robot arm is designed to achieve 4 degrees of freedom driven by two rollers in the robot body and a motor embedded on the track. The unique aspect of the robot arm design is the extruder. It consists of three components - the spray bar, electron emission head and filament feed head. They are controlled by two hydraulic actuators to achieve accurate motion. The electron emission and filament feed heads work together for manufacturing the Orion pressure vessel printing while the spray bar is only activated when it is applying heat shield material. This provides easy-access one-step manufacturing process to assemble the whole Orion. There is no need to continuously move separate parts of the pressure vessel, as the design allows for several processes to occur in one location. We created two animations that illustrated the EBFF process for pressure vessel manufacturing and additive spray for heat shield.