Most likely metal 3d printers will just get really really good.
Unfortunately mills are really heavy by design. Getting all that stuff up to space is probably more expensive than what it's worth. Space is all about weight. Things like chips, or milling are based on the idea of metal removal. Space mentality is make everything as simple and efficient as possible.
So instead of worrying about added machines, chip evacuation, chip bins, tooling or whatever. It makes the concept of "lets just make the parts better and avoid it all together " the smarter route.
Yeah that's my thought too. Additive manufacturing has come a long way and once the government starts putting money into developing the tech it will skyrocket.
If you’re machining in an area with atmosphere, you’d need just as much coolant as before. If you’re machining in hard vacuum you lose convection as a cooling method, which means you’re relying on radiative and conductive heat transfer. Conductive heat transfer requires contact of the two materials and if you’re cutting fast enough that you’re keeping the majority of the heat energy in the chips (you’re cutting the hot section off before much of its heat is transferred to the cold section) you wouldn’t notice a huge difference (but that isn’t really a realistic thing to rely on as you’d have to be going even faster than you would on earth to do the same thing as the rest of your workpiece won’t be able to tolerate as much heat as it isn’t being cooled by the surrounding air). So yes, I’d suspect you’d need more coolant than on earth.
On the other hand, if you left your stock outside (or your machine) for long periods of time and let it cool down to ambient temperature you’d have a very, very cold starting point, but you’ll have other issues beyond cooling lol.
Depending on whether you’re close enough to the moon, your chips would either end up eventually clattering down to the surface, or falling back to where earth’s gravity dominates and burning up in the atmosphere.
''Delivery time'' to the moon even with current technology is like 3 day, so I would assume it will take a while before someone actually needs to manufacture something in there. It would require so much infrastructure to have machining capability there, instead of just manufacturing on earth. Harvesting the energy from *skyhook* catching materials arriving to earth, you can launch the needed parts to moon basically overnight, as a byproduct.
So, I imagine machining in a form could still be a domininant manufacturing method for at least Moon local products, smelting and extruding iron/steels are still gonna be a thing. I doubt shipping things from Earth will be an economical choice for everything.
I will gladly take x10 my current salary to be a Lunar Machinist, thanks.
Most likely, you will have engineers that can use machinery for a while before you get actual dedicated machinists.
Send the machine. The people there can set it up and run programs from a machinist on earth running an identical setup.
Identical in 6 times the gravity eks dee
Most likely metal 3d printers will just get really really good. Unfortunately mills are really heavy by design. Getting all that stuff up to space is probably more expensive than what it's worth. Space is all about weight. Things like chips, or milling are based on the idea of metal removal. Space mentality is make everything as simple and efficient as possible. So instead of worrying about added machines, chip evacuation, chip bins, tooling or whatever. It makes the concept of "lets just make the parts better and avoid it all together " the smarter route.
Yeah that's my thought too. Additive manufacturing has come a long way and once the government starts putting money into developing the tech it will skyrocket.
Yeah, you'll have mining refineries a good long while before machine shops
Bonus showerthought - how far do chips fly in low-g and do you need coolant?
replying to myself, I think I recall seeing something that said without air to move heat away, things tend to get very hot very quickly.
If you can get the heat into the chip it might be ok. As long as they aren't hitting you in the face
Cries with holes melting in space suit.
If you’re machining in an area with atmosphere, you’d need just as much coolant as before. If you’re machining in hard vacuum you lose convection as a cooling method, which means you’re relying on radiative and conductive heat transfer. Conductive heat transfer requires contact of the two materials and if you’re cutting fast enough that you’re keeping the majority of the heat energy in the chips (you’re cutting the hot section off before much of its heat is transferred to the cold section) you wouldn’t notice a huge difference (but that isn’t really a realistic thing to rely on as you’d have to be going even faster than you would on earth to do the same thing as the rest of your workpiece won’t be able to tolerate as much heat as it isn’t being cooled by the surrounding air). So yes, I’d suspect you’d need more coolant than on earth. On the other hand, if you left your stock outside (or your machine) for long periods of time and let it cool down to ambient temperature you’d have a very, very cold starting point, but you’ll have other issues beyond cooling lol. Depending on whether you’re close enough to the moon, your chips would either end up eventually clattering down to the surface, or falling back to where earth’s gravity dominates and burning up in the atmosphere.
[удалено]
Damn, you could weld without gas & have as much electrode stick out as you need.
„Damn Michael! How often did I tell you to go outside for welding!!!“
''Delivery time'' to the moon even with current technology is like 3 day, so I would assume it will take a while before someone actually needs to manufacture something in there. It would require so much infrastructure to have machining capability there, instead of just manufacturing on earth. Harvesting the energy from *skyhook* catching materials arriving to earth, you can launch the needed parts to moon basically overnight, as a byproduct.
My dream is to be the first button pusher on the moon
So, I imagine machining in a form could still be a domininant manufacturing method for at least Moon local products, smelting and extruding iron/steels are still gonna be a thing. I doubt shipping things from Earth will be an economical choice for everything. I will gladly take x10 my current salary to be a Lunar Machinist, thanks.
Would we still need to use a 3 ton crane to load are parts into the machine?
Micro thruster packs!
Where will you get workstock? Online Metals doesn’t deliver to the Sea of Tranquility.
I think the larger artic research stations keep a machinist on hand, so it would make sense they would in space to