posted on 2015-07-17, 11:00authored byAthanasios Goulas, Ross Friel
Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to investigate the effect of the main process parameters of Laser Melting (LM) type Additive Manufacturing (AM) on multi layered structures manufactured from JSC-1A Lunar regolith (Moondust) simulant powder. Design/methodology/approach – Laser diffraction technology was used to analyse and confirm the simulant powder material particle sizes and distribution. Geometrical shapes were then manufactured on a Realizer SLM™ 100 using the simulant powder. The laser-processed samples were analysed via Scanning Electron Microscopy (SEM) to evaluate surface and internal morphologies, Energy-dispersive X-ray Spectroscopy (EDS) to analyse the chemical composition after processing and the samples were mechanically investigated via Vickers micro-hardness testing. Findings – A combination of process parameters resulting in an energy density value of 1.011 J/mm2 allowed the successful production of components directly from Lunar regolith simulant. An internal relative porosity of 40.8 %, material hardness of 670 ± 11 HV and a dimensional accuracy of 99.8 % were observed in the fabricated samples. Originality/value – This research paper is investigating the novel application of a Powder Bed Fusion AM process category as a potential on-site manufacturing approach for manufacturing structures/components out of Lunar regolith (Moondust). It was shown that this AM process category has the capability to directly manufacture multi-layered parts out of Lunar regolith, which has potential applicability to future moon colonization.
History
School
Mechanical, Electrical and Manufacturing Engineering
Published in
Rapid Prototyping Journal
Volume
22
Issue
6
Pages
864-870
Citation
GOULAS, A. and FRIEL, R.J., 2016. 3D printing with moondust. Rapid Prototyping Journal, 22(6), pp.864-870.
This work is made available according to the conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0) licence. Full details of this licence are available at: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/
Acceptance date
2016-02-15
Publication date
2016-10-17
Copyright date
2016
Notes
This paper was accepted for publication in the journal Rapid Prototyping Journal and the definitive published version is available at http://dx.doi.org/10.1108/RPJ-02-2015-0022