By Paul Chase On Wednesday, June 22nd, members of the Washington-Liberty NASA TechRise Team (pictured below) toured Nova Labs after reaching out about our 3D Printing capabilities.
The team is working on a 2U satellite form factor - that’s 10cm by 10cm by 20cm - to monitor
radiation in the upper atmosphere, to be launched on a sounding rocket later this year. Nova Labs printed a weight-optimized prototype of their mounting frame (pictured below) on one of our Prusa Minis, while recommending more advanced 3D Printing (the SLS or Selective Laser Sintering process, which melts plastic powder layer by layer) for a stronger part. McFly (the printers all have fun names) printed the part in PETG with a crazy amount of support, but it broke off cleanly after some persuasion.
Once the print finished, team members Ava Schwarz, Caleb Rice, Wyatt Hogan, and Qiaojing Huang, as well as their sponsor Mr. Jeffrey Carpenter came by to tour Nova Labs and get an idea of the rest of our capabilities. Their next step is building out the test article before it gets launched into the upper atmosphere for the mission. For more information about NASA Techrise you can check out https://www.nasa.gov/techrise-student-challenge and read about previous winners, which were launched on high-altitude balloons. Nova Labs was happy to help, and wishes the team well with their build and in future projects!
Comments