Hot off the NASA Presses - a 3-D Printed Rocket Engine

Engineers Zach Jones left, and Chris Protz examine the
first, full-scale 3-D printed copper engine part in
the additive manufacturing laboratory at Marshall.

Image Credit: NASA/MSFC/Emmett Given
The Marshall Star | NASA

Engineers prepare a 3-D printed breadboard engine made up of
75 percent of the parts needed to build a rocket engine for a
test at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville,
Alabama.Credits: NASA/MSFC/Emmett Given

Only a handful of copper rocket parts have been made with additive manufacturing, so NASA is breaking new technological ground by 3-D printing a rocket component that must withstand both extreme hot and cold temperatures and has complex cooling channels built on the outside of an inner wall that is as thin as a pencil mark. To increase U.S. industrial competitiveness, data will be made available to American manufacturers in NASA’s Materials and Processing Information System (MAPTIS) managed by Marshall.
“Our goal is to build rocket engine parts up to 10 times faster and reduce cost by more than 50 percent,” said Chris Protz, the Marshall propulsion engineer leading the project. “We are not trying to just make and test one part. We are developing a repeatable process that industry can adopt to manufacture engine parts with advanced designs. The ultimate goal is to make building rocket engines more affordable for everyone.”
The next step in this project is for Marshall engineers to ship the copper liner to NASA’s Langley Research Center, where an electron-beam, freedom fabrication facility will direct-deposit a nickel super-alloy structural jacket onto the outside of the copper liner. Later this summer, the engine component will be hot-fire tested at Marshall to determine how the engine performs under extreme temperatures and pressures simulating the conditions inside the engine as it burns propellant during a rocket flight.

NASA Team Moves Closer to Building a 3-D Printed Rocket Engine | NASA

A NASA team moved a step closer to building a completely 3-D printed, high-performance rocket engine by manufacturing complex engine parts and test firing them together with cryogenic liquid hydrogen and oxygen to produce 20,000 pounds of thrust.
Additive manufacturing, or 3-D printing, is a key technology for enhancing space vehicle designs and manufacturing and enabling more affordable exploration missions. The technology has the potential to influence spacecraft built for leaving Earth and spaceships and landers for visiting other destinations. Future plans include performing engine tests with liquid oxygen and methane--key propellants for Martian landers since methane and oxygen production might be possible on the Red Planet.
“We manufactured and then tested about 75 percent of the parts needed to build a 3-D printed rocket engine,” said Elizabeth Robertson, the project manager for the additively manufactured demonstrator engine at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama. “By testing the turbopumps, injectors and valves together, we’ve shown that it would be possible to build a 3-D printed engine for multiple purposes such as landers, in-space propulsion or rocket engine upper stages.”




Models | 3D Resources (Beta)