"Space Jam": Zero Gravity 3D Printer

This is my undergraduate senior design project and was done in collaboration with 3 other wonderful fellow mechanical engineering students. Together, we designed and built a high-fidelity prototype of a zero-gravity 3D printer from scratch. Our work served as a solid foundation as a long-term additive manufacturing research project lead by Professor Doug Matson in collaboration with NASA. The prototype has fully functional firmware, electronics, and mechanical components, with the exception of the printhead assembly and laser assembly which will be later supplied by NASA engineers.

For more information regarding the work behind this project, please refer to the final report of our project.

Meet the team: with Isabelle Anderson, Lauren Hassi, and Jeremy Kanovsky

Project Details

Printer performing homing sequence

Movement demo using a sharpie as the end effector

Apart from logistical tasks such as brainstorming, client interviews, and presentations, I mostly worked on two parts of the project: The torsional mechanism for tensioning the printer's substrate and the electrical system for powering the entire printer.

Torsional Mechanism

The technology we used is a derivation from Laminated Object Manufacturing (LOM). One important part of the printing process is to move a roll of substrate (represented by a roll of paper) while keeping it well tensioned. I designed a mechanism to be mounted coaxial to the unwinding stage of the roller assembly, which has a torsional spring and heavy-duty ball bearings embedded in its body. as the roll of substrate unwinds, the distance sensor mounted towards the substrate will pass the roller's current diameter to the microcontroller, which will calculate and send out appropriate control signals to the stepper motors to maintain a prober tension on the substrate.

Electronics Assembly

The low-level firmware of the printer runs off a Teensy 4.0. We chose this microcontroller over others because of its speed, size, price, and number of available GPIOs. The Teensy 4.0 is connected to 7 DRV8825 stepper motor drivers, 2 distance (time of flight) sensors for the rollers, and 3 limit switches for the X, Y, and Z axis of the printer. A Raspberry Pi is used to run a touch screen user interface, receive user input, and send G Code commands to the Teensy 4.0. Currently, the printer is using a single 24V DC power supply, but future modification is required to make sure the printer is compatible with the rest of the system on a space aircraft.

Electronics system overview (may not match the final version exactly)

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