NASA engineers partnered with digital manufacturer Protolabs for a generative design experiment at the recent PowerSource Global Summit, a technology conference held in Orlando.
The goal of the experiment was to promote the game-changing role generative design can play in accelerating innovation. Attendees would work with NASA engineers to utilize the AI-driven tool in the creation of a space-ready part from scratch, followed by quick-turn digital manufacturing delivering the generatively designed part to the conference 36 hours later.
NASA engineers challenged attendees to generatively design an apparatus capable of withstanding a trip to the moon with a function to help advance the Artemis mission and its goal to explore the moon in preparation for life on another planet. The part would secure a 250mL container that collects volatile compounds released after sunrise on the surface of the moon.
NASA and conference attendees jointly developed a list of geometries and qualities the apparatus would need to survive the flight and tolerate the moon’s extreme conditions. For example, the part would need to function in a wide temperature range. At sunrise, the temperature increases dramatically from -315 °F to -55 °F (-193 °C to -48 °C). Conference engineers developed parameters by analyzing the function of the part and the environment it would need to function in.
From a mass perspective, the part could not weigh more than 68 pounds. NASA stats indicate that it costs $1 million for every kilogram (2.2 pounds) launched into space. A material like Aluminum 6061 was an ideal choice due to its outstanding strength-to-weight ratio. The size of the part was also a factor with the limited capacity on a spacecraft. The group ensured the part would be modular, so it could be separated into two parts and compactly stackable. Finally, the volume of each component was restricted to about the size of a shoebox.
Durability was also an important consideration, particularly during the launch of the spacecraft. To make certain the apparatus survives, a parameter was set stating the part’s base modal frequency would exceed 100Hz.
Once on the moon, the group determined the apparatus’ footings would have to provide stability on the moon’s uneven surfaces. A final parameter aimed to use the moon’s extreme cold temperatures to provide stability once the two components are stacked to form the apparatus. The upper portion would feature feet that bind when cooled, which was proven out in a thermal stress analysis.
Following the presentation, NASA engineers loaded the parameters into its generative design software, producing a part that outperformed expectations. In recent history, parts designed via generative often average a 6 to 10 times improvement in mass, stiffness, and overall design time.
“The awesome thing about it is that we didn’t know what we were going to make in the end,” said Matthew Vaerewyck, Mechanical Engineer at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center.
In addition to the conditions necessary to survive and perform the task on the moon, NASA’s generative design process factors in design-for-manufacturability. Informed by Protolabs’ toolpathing instructions, the AI-driven design tool ensured the part could be machined using only two axes to minimize the overall machining minutes required. Tweaks like the breaks in the apparatus’ circular design improved accessibility for the end mills as they moved along X- and Y-axes.
“For this event to be successful, we knew that any manufacturer we went with [to make the part], needed to deliver the part we ordered on time. There was no room for error or delay,” said Vaerewyck. Digital manufacturing, with its ability to produce and ship parts in as fast as a day, has been a logical partner in NASA’s focus on quick-turn iteration.
Vaerewyck and his team uploaded the CAD file to Protolabs digital quoting platform that evening, less than 10 hours after the original crowdsourcing experiment. Soon after, the Aluminum 6061 block was loaded into a CNC machine at Protolabs’ facility in Brooklyn Park, Minn. Automated toolpathing software along with input from Protolabs engineers identified an efficient 19 hours of machining time followed by four hours of processing.
The part was complete and ready for shipping at 4:31 p.m. the next day and immediately sent off for overnight delivery. The part travelled from Minnesota to Florida, arriving before the doors opened on the final day of the conference — just 36 hours after the CAD file was uploaded for manufacturing.
NASA was able to showcase the part to the attendees responsible for generatively designing it, even showing its effectiveness using a dry ice demonstration as an example of its vapor-capturing abilities.
This article was written by Dan Snetselaar, CNC Product Lead, Protolabs (Maple Plain, MN). For more information, visit here .
Transcript
00:00:03 my name is Matthew verick I'm a mechanical engineer at NASA's Goddard space flight center uh right now I'm uh working on our generative design and evolve structures team NASA Goddard is one of the largest centers that NASA has and we do uh what's called premission planning you know pre-phase a that type of stuff into prototyping designing executing launching uh and then
00:00:26 ultimately disposal of of satellites and and other missions what we're trying to do is we're trying to change the scale of making parts from months and years down to days and weeks generative design is a method of making uh for right now structures uh for any one of the NASA missions and what we do is instead of a traditional design what we're doing is we're actually taking the requirements
00:00:51 of what does this thing have to do and what's what environment doesn't need to survive in and then building the structure from there what we've seen with generative design is say six to 10 times Improvement um in multiple different Avenues of both uh Mass uh stiffness and design time so it's estimated that a launched kilogram uh cost about a million dollars so any
00:01:14 amount of mass that we can save and still accomplish the mission you know ultimately saves taxpayer dollars the power source Global Summit was a uh a technology Summit to bring together uh government Private Industry uh and you know universities and things like that in order to exchange exchange uh information ideas and best practices to you know move forward and work
00:01:35 together NASA Godard was asked to present our vision to reality how do we take a a vision from inception uh into reality and so we immediately went well we then clearly need to have a vision of everyone at the conference and then we want to have something at the the end of it we thought hey what we're going to do is we're going to come up with a scenario of something we wanted to look
00:01:58 at lunar volatiles uh so basically gases and things that are emitted from the moon's surface when sunlight hits them and how would we capture those the only thing that we really had kind of set in stone was we had a 250ml Erin Meer flasks and we said these are going to be our our You Know standin sample collection containers we actually solicited input from the the crowd of
00:02:21 hey you know what what are some best practices what are things we should do how should the sample collection container uh function the awesome part about it was we didn't know what we were going to make at the end we had reached out to prabs beforehand and said hey we're interested in having a part made you know this is the the timeline our keynote was at 10:30 on the first day of
00:02:41 the conference we concluded around 11:30 we took those requirements from the crowd uh and then in a matter of 3 to 4 hours came up with a generative design of uh an object that could hold the sample collection containers and and then about 4:30 or so uh I had a a completed design uh that would work and meet all of our requirements we were able to send the part off to uh protol
00:03:05 labs and they were able to make it in less than 24 hours I'm Greg pers senior manufacturing engineering manager the opportunity came up we weren't aware of the size of the part we had some general guidelines about it and then that it was going to be a one-day quick turn the the part was uploaded at 9:00 it finished tool pathing shortly thereafter um at that
00:03:27 point it had 19 hours of time and then about 4 hours of manual processing time a lot of it is completed by our automated software but then also out on the shop floor that is where the human element comes in as well so we had somebody going out and checking on it checking on progress making sure that there were no alarms in our automated Milling process that would stop it from
00:03:49 progressing so what makes it really unique is that the part was designed using generative design but it was designed using all of our parameters within our manufacturing process so it was something that could get kicked out and run through without any issues I think 5:00 was our deadline and I think the first Parts made it out at like 4:31 this part went through very very quickly
00:04:11 went through pretty painlessly the next morning at about uh 730 in the morning parts were there uh in hand we were just absolutely Beyond stoked one of the things that we did uh when we were demoing the part was actually you know held dry ice up to them and we were able to collect some volatiles from dry ice and you know the atmosphere around us in those and kind
00:04:35 of show the the the crowd how how we would do that almost everybody came by on Wednesday just to be like that was awesome you know to see that you guys came through and we we actually got a lot of questions about like okay how much of this did you actually plan ahead of time how much of this was pre-coordinated and it was like really none of it as an engineer anytime that
00:04:55 you design something and you spend time you know ideating on something and oh this should look like this and it should work like that part of the reason why I'm an engineer is I just I love that you know I I designed this thing I I made this thing we actually had uh the whole team kind of gathered around and you know we had the the part still wrapped in the the protol laabs uh bags
00:05:17 and so we opened them up and I I don't think there was a single person who just like that looks awesome we were just very happy with uh with with how it turned out
