Tag: 3-D Printing

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Tethers Unlimited’s printer-recycler goes to NASA

Refabricator
Tethers Unlimited’s Refabricator is a recycler and 3-D printer in one unit, which is about the size of a dorm-room refrigerator. This is the tech demonstration unit that’s been undergoing tests at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Alabama. The unit is to go to the space station next year. (NASA Photo / Emmett Given)

Tethers Unlimited Inc. says it’s delivered a combination 3-D printer and plastic recycler to NASA for testing on the International Space Station.

Tethers Unlimited CEO Rob Hoyt told GeekWire that the Refabricator payload, about the size of a mini-refrigerator, was built under the terms of a $2.5 million Phase 3 contract from NASA’s Small Business Innovation Research program, or SBIR. It’s on its way to NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida and is due to be sent to the station on a SpaceX Dragon resupply flight later this year, Hoyt said in an email.

The formal delivery to NASA marks the culmination of three months of performance and certification testing both at Tethers Unlimited’s lab in Bothell, Wash., and at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala., the company said today in a news release.

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Boeing HorizonX invests in Morf3D for 3-D printing

Morf3D innovation center
Morf3D’s R&D Innovation Center is aimed at advancing the state of additive manufacturing. (Morf3D Photo)

The latest addition to Boeing’s venture-capital portfolio is Morf3D, a California startup that focuses on aerospace applications for 3-D printing.

Boeing HorizonX Ventures is a co-leader of the Series A investment round, announced by the companies today. Neither Boeing nor Morf3D detailed how much Boeing was investing, or the total amount raised. However, HorizonX’s investments typically range from seven figures to the low eight figures.

Morf3D is based in El Segundo, Calif., and has been producing 3-D-printed aluminum and titanium components for Boeing satellites and helicopters since the startup was founded in late 2015.

The company uses state-of-the-art software and engineering expertise to reduce mass and increase the performance and functionality of metal parts created through additive manufacturing.

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Relativity raises $35M for 3-D printed rockets

Stargate 3-D printer
An illustration shows how Relativity Space’s Stargate metal 3-D printer compares with the height of a human. (Relativity Space Illustration)

Just a week after unveiling an agreement to use one of NASA’s rocket test complexes in Mississippi, Relativity Space is announcing $35 million in new funding that’ll help the rocket-building startup take advantage of the deal.

The Series B financing round is led by Playground Global, with full participation from Relativity’s existing investors, Social Capital, Y Combinator and billionaire entrepreneur Mark Cuban. The money brings total investment in the three-year-old company to more than $45 million.

“It’ll make us able to grow the team from 17 employees to over 45 by the end of this year,” Relativity CEO and co-founder Tim Ellis told GeekWire.

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Amazon wins patent for 3-D printing on demand

It’s been a long time coming, but today Amazon can say it holds the patent for a retailing system that can take custom orders for 3-D printed items, get them made, and have them sent out for delivery or picked up by the customer.

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Tethers Unlimited wins NASA grant for FabLab

Refabricator
Tethers Unlimited’s Refabricator is a recycler and 3-D printer in one unit, which is about the size of a dorm-room refrigerator. This is the tech demonstration unit that’s been undergoing tests at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Alabama. The unit is to go to the space station next year. (NASA Photo / Emmett Given)

Bothell, Wash.-based Tethers Unlimited is getting a shot at helping to create an advanced fabrication facility that could manufacture and recycle 3-D printed items in space.

Tethers Unlimited and two other companies will have 18 months to deliver a prototype for the multi-material fabrication lab, or FabLab. The other companies are Interlog Corp. of Anaheim, Calif.; and Techshot of Greenville, Ind.

About $10.2 million has been set aside for the prototyping phase of the project. After the prototype is delivered, NASA will select partners for further development of the technology.

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Relativity Space reveals plan for 3-D printed rockets

Relativity Space factory
Relativity Space’s Stargate 3-D printer is at work at the company’s Los Angeles factory, with a 3-D printed fuel tank sitting at left. (Relativity Space Photo)

Can a robotic 3-D printer spit out all the parts of a rocket without humans stepping in until the end? Relativity Space says that’s what it’s working toward.

The company, which has its roots in the Seattle area and is now headquartered in Los Angeles, stepped out of the shadows today with a website that shows off its technology. Two of its founders, CEO Tim Ellis and chief technology officer Jordan Noone, are veterans of Blue Origin, Amazon billionaire Jeff Bezos’ space venture.

Ellis provided hints of what Relativity Space was up to during a congressional hearing in July, but the updated website lays out the plan in much more detail. An on-the-scene report from Bloomberg News provides additional color.

Relativity’s aim is to reduce the cost of launch vehicles dramatically by streamlining the manufacturing process. It says its fully 3-D printed rockets will have only 1,000 parts, compared to the 100,000 or more moving parts that a traditional rocket contains.

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Scientists ID fish 40 years after it was caught

Duckbilled fish
The duckbilled clingfish has a broad snout like a duck’s bill. (Kevin Conway and Glenn Moore)

After spending 40 years sitting in a museum jar, a toothy fish from the waters off Australia has been identified as a previously unknown species dubbed the duckbilled clingfish.

To document the species’ characteristics, researchers turned to technologies that weren’t widely available when the fish was caught in 1977: digitized X-ray scans and 3-D printing.

The fish tale was laid out last week in the journal Copeia.

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NASA backs mini-antennas and 3-D printer

Cubesats
Nanosatellites tumble through space after their deployment from the International Space Station. Kymeta is working on flat-panel communication antennas that could be placed on such satellites. (NASA Photo)

Flat-panel antennas that are tiny enough to fit on a nanosatellite and a 3-D printer that can recycle space station trash are among the Seattle-area projects that have won seed money in NASA’s latest round of grant-making.

They’re just a couple of the 133 proposals selected for contracts of up to $750,000 under NASA’s Small Business Innovation Research program, or SBIR. But what’s notable about Kymeta’s mini-antennas and Tethers Unlimited Inc.’s ERASMUS plastics recycler and 3-D printer is that they could spawn products for use on Earth as well as in space.

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777X tool sets record for 3-D-printed objects

Image: Judge measures tool
Guinness World Records’ judge, Michael Empric, measures the trim tool (Credit: ORNL)

A trim-and-drill tool that will be tested during construction of the Boeing Co.’s next-generation 777X jet has already produced something notable: recognition from Guinness World Records as the world’s largest solid 3-D-printed object.

The trim tool, developed at the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee, was made in only 30 hours using carbon fiber and ABS thermoplastic composite materials. It’s 17.5 feet long, 5.5 feet wide and 1.5 feet tall, and weighs about 1,650 pounds.

After Oak Ridge completes verification testing, the tool will get its tryout at a Boeing production facility in St. Louis, Mo. It’ll be used to secure the jet’s composite wing for drilling and machining before assembly.

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NASA orders a 3-D printer/recycler for space

Image: Refabricator
TUI/Firmamentum’s Positrusion device turns 3-D-printed items into plastic filament. The recycler would be paired with a 3-D printer in Firmamentum’s Refabricator. (Credit: Tethers Unlimited)

Firmamentum, a division of Tethers Unlimited Inc. in Bothell, Wash., says it has won $750,000 in NASA funding to build a combination 3-D printer and plastic recycler for the International Space Station.

The device, known as the Refabricator, is due to be delivered to NASA next year, said Rob Hoyt, president of TUI/Firmamentum.

“This is an experiment to see how many times you can recycle plastic in the microgravity environment before the polymers break down,” Hoyt told GeekWire today at the Space Frontier Foundation’s NewSpace 2016 conference in Seattle.

Firmamentum’s plastic-recycling process, known as Positrusion, was the focus of earlier experiments funded by NASA’s Small Business Innovation Research program, or SBIR. Hoyt said the most recent award was made last Friday, with backing from SBIR as well as the In-Space Manufacturing project at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Alabama.

Another company, California-based Made In Space, already has built a couple of 3-D printers that went into use on the space station. The 3-D printers melt down plastic filament and deposit tiny squirts of the stuff in a computer-controlled pattern to produce tools and other objects.

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