Where the production volume is high, as in store-bought items, yes, 3D
printed plastic parts are more expensive than moulded ones. The
break-even comes at about 100 to 10,000 parts, depending, but an
aluminium mould can often be economically used for a few hundred to a
few thousand parts.
There are quite a few low-volume plastic items which are 3D printed
though, like specialised tooling etc.
For rockets? Can't see 3D-printed tanks ever being more economic than
sheet fabrication, but for interstages, fuel lines, engine parts, why not.
Any "mass" production of orbital rockets is not going to be more than
1,000 in the near/bankable/forseeable future, and most likely less than
100 or 10 or even 3.
Peter Fairbrother
Oh, on parallel printing: I use FDM printers with 6 hot ends in ditto
mode (all 6 parts are the same) for plastic parts.
For 3D tanks, I have a vision of about 100 MIG welders in a circle all
working at once. I guess the tank rotates rather than the welders. The
weldment won't have time to cool a lot, but that would probably be a
good thing depending on metallurgy.
On 14/03/2023 12:00, John HALPENNY (j.halpenny) wrote:
3D printing may not be the solution to mass produced rockets. Note that
printing of plastics is a mature technology and there are printers everywhere,
but nothing I see in the store is printed. It’s just too expensive.
Sent from my phone
On Mar 14, 2023, at 2:22 AM, George Herbert <george.herbert@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
A lot of people can build a bridge that doesn’t fall down. An engineer should
do it efficiently and understanding margins and lifetime.
-george
Sent from my iPhone
On Mar 13, 2023, at 9:53 PM, Derek Lyons <fairwater@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
On Mon, Mar 13, 2023 at 7:18 PM BrianK ABQ <cielobenazul@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
You know, for a bunch of rocket geeks; you can hold a pretty informative chat
on high finance. I'm enjoying it.
Engineering is as much counting beans as sliding rules. Always has been.
