About this Abstract |
Meeting |
2022 Annual International Solid Freeform Fabrication Symposium (SFF Symp 2022)
|
Symposium
|
2022 Annual International Solid Freeform Fabrication Symposium (SFF Symp 2022)
|
Presentation Title |
Resin Development for On-Orbit Fabrication of Spacecraft Structures by Direct Solar Polymerization |
Author(s) |
William Yerazunis, Avishai Weiss, Patryk Radyjowski, Richard Cottrell |
On-Site Speaker (Planned) |
William Yerazunis |
Abstract Scope |
A paradoxe in spacecraft design is that spacecraft are destined to operate in orbit where maneuvering thruster firings produce stresses below 0.01 G, but the spacecraft must be strong enough to survive the roughly 10 G’s of linear acceleration and 50 G’s of vibration during launch. In this paper, we follow on previous work to develop and test an alternative: the post-launch freeform additive manufacture of a major comsat structural element in UV cured resin, using solar UV to trigger polymerization. Here, we develop the chemistry of a UV curable liquid resin that has a very low (below our chamber limit of 0.2 kPa) vapor pressure post-degassing, but also is not dependent on oxygen presence to activate the thermal inhibitors that prevent premature polymerization. In tests, we successfully freeform 3D printed a small (60 mm) parabolic dish at chamber limit pressure using simulated solar UV flooding the chamber. |
Proceedings Inclusion? |
Definite: Post-meeting proceedings |