One Piece

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DESIGN SOLUTION The core principle of the design is using six identical pieces to build a satellite. Each piece contain a sheet metal and two bending extrusions on two sides. The additive manufacturing technology enable it have the satisfied stiffness but more accurate than the sheet meatal and less material used than CNC. KEY REQUIREMENTS CONSIDERED 1. Designing Thinner Component to Make It Easy to Machining The extrusions of each piece shall be short but enough to joint with another piece. During the printing, the large face down to the platform, and the extrusion will face up. The length of the extrusions shall be short to reducing the printing time, yet long enough for the joint. 2. Enable Frame to Support Most Force and Torque The frame, which consist of the two edges of each piece are thicker and will contact with the other piece, taking most of the force and the torque, saving material used in other places. 3. Making Extrusion At the Core Position for Polishing Because the finish of the printer is not clear, so the design left some extrusions on its edges, on which the satellite will make contact with the deployer. Therefore the satellite can be polishing by traditional cnc method to achieve required tolerance. ADVANTAGE There are three advantage of such a design. First, module designing make it easy to manufacturing and assembling. Compared with traditional huge size satellite, one of the advantage of the Cubesat is it can be build and lunched very quick to deal with the emergency situation, such as the environment observation after earthquake. By module designing, we can print and assembly a satellite very fast. Second, thinner component enable shorter printing time and better structure property. The 3d printing process require the structure to be self-support, however, it may cause distortion and decrease in the strength of the component. In this design, each component are thinner than 15 mm, decrease the area that might have the mentioned problems. Third, the frame work take the most force, reduce the material used. Traditionally the one unit cubesat uses the whole wall to support it gravity and the force applied on, however, in this design, the frame take most of the force and the torque, decreasing the material used in the other places, reducing the weight of the satellite. PATENT APPLICATION FILED No patent application is filed in this design ADDITIONAL INFORMATION 1. Additive Manufacturing techniques SELECTIVE LASER SINTERING (SLS) will be chosen in the printing of the structure, for the flowing two reasons: First, the component in this project is not too complex to be manufactured, so it is not necessary to us other expansive method to manufacturing it. Second, due to the module design, we need at least 6 pieces to assembly one satellite, so it is better if they can be print in the same time. SLS can meet the requirement, so I chose this method. 2. Build Material AlSi10Mg will be selected as the material to be used for its good thermal properties and low weight, which is quiet important in the satellite.