It’s a small S that doesn’t look like much, yet it’s a world first. Metal 3D printing has just been produced on the International Space Station (ISS). Printed by the Metal 3D experiment on May 30, 2024, this S heralds the imminent arrival of tools entirely manufactured in Earth orbit.
The Metal 3D 3D printer was developed by Airbus Defense and Space on behalf of ESA and is operated by Cadmos, the center dedicated to microgravity activities at CNES.
It joined the ISS on January 30 with the Cygnus NG-20 mission. It was then installed in the Columbus module, the European space laboratory, by the Danish astronaut Andreas Mogensen.
Its goal is to demonstrate that it is possible to produce metal parts in a state of microgravity.
This would allow astronauts to print any tool or metal object they need, ensuring their autonomy both in orbit around the Earth on the orbital station and in a future lunar installation.
A process that needs to be reinvented
For now, the S printed is just a test to make sure everything works as expected. The first real samples will be produced in the coming weeks.
There will be four of them and they will have to reproduce the parts already printed on Earth.
These parts, each weighing approximately 125 g of microgravity, will be printed in approximately four weeks, at a rate of 3 hours and 30 minutes of printing per day. It will then be sent to the land cow floor for analysis.
To achieve printing on the ISS, everything had to be reinvented. Indeed, the additive printing technique used here with metal is one commonly used for plastics.
The stainless steel wire is pushed to the print area where it is melted by the laser and then deposited in layers as the print progresses. The melting point of metal is around 1400°C, the Metal 3D printer is completely enclosed in a box in which oxygen is replaced by nitrogen, which is less flammable.
The entire printing process is monitored from the ground.