This Novel 3D Printer Could Pave the Way for Space-Based Factories of the Future

A researcher from the University of Glasgow's James Watt School of Engineering has been named as the inventor on a new patent that, he says, could deliver effective 3D printing for use in space-based factories — tested on a notorious "Vomit Comet" ride hosted by the European Space Agency (ESA).

"Currently, everything that goes into Earth’s orbit is built on the surface and sent into space on rockets," Giles Bailet, the named inventor, explains. "They have tightly limited mass and volumes and can shake themselves to pieces during launch when mechanical constraints are breached, destroying expensive cargo in the process. If instead we could place fabricators in space to build structures on demand, we would be freed from those payload restrictions. In turn, that could pave the way to creating much more ambitious, less resource-intensive projects, with systems actually optimized for their mission and not for the constraints of rocket launches."

“Additive manufacturing, or 3D printing, is capable of producing remarkably complex materials quickly and at low cost. Putting that technology in space and printing what we need for assembly in orbit would be fantastically useful," Bailet continues. "“However, what works well here on Earth is often less robust in the vacuum of space, and 3D printing has never been done outside of the pressurised modules of the International Space Station. The filaments in conventional 3D printers often break or jam in microgravity and in vacuum, which is a problem that needs to be solved before they can be reliably used in space."

Bailet's patent describes a new design of 3D printer adapted specifically for use in microgravity, swapping the strings of filament found on traditional printers for grains of material fed from a tank to a nozzle using the patented "granular material conveyance and transfer apparatus." The result is a printer that should be able to not only operate in orbit aboard space stations, proven through tests on a parabolic aircraft colloquially known as "Vomit Comets," which simulate microgravity, but even directly in the vacuum of space itself.

"We've tested the technology extensively in the lab and now in microgravity, and we're confident that it’s ready to perform as expected, opening up the possibility of 3D printing antenna and other spacecraft parts in space," Bailet claims. "3D-printed space reflectors, like those being developed by my colleague Professor Colin McInnes' SOLSPACE project, could gather energy from the sun 24 hours a day, helping us reach net-zero with an entirely new form of low-carbon power generation."

"Similarly," Bailet continues, "crystals grown in space are often larger and more well-ordered than those made on Earth, so orbital chemical factories could produce new or improved drugs for delivery back to the surface. It has been suggested, for example, that insulin grown in space could be nine times more effective, allowing diabetic people to inject it once every three days instead of three times a day, as they often have to do today."

The patent has been granted by the Word Intellectual Property Organization under International Patent Number WO 2024/105126 A1; Bailet and colleagues are now seeking funding in order to demonstrate the technology in space.