The economics of additive manufacturing (AM) currently don't make it cost effective to produce goods that can otherwise be made with mass production technologies. As a result, 3D printing today may be best suited for small-batch production and specialty items. So, what could be more specialized than a rocket engine?
A startup dubbed Tri-D Dynamics wants to leverage hybrid AM techniques to produce rocket engines that open a new market of smaller scale rockets for the deployment of small satellites and cubesats. Though the company is new, its founders Deepak Atyam and Alex Finch have already demonstrated that the technology could very well work, and they've filed a number of patents to prove it.
To learn just how AM might affect the NewSpace industry, ENGINEERING.com spoke with Atyam and Finch.
From Research to Tri-D
Atyam explained that the business sort of sprang up through work he performed as an intern at Marshall Space Flight Center in Alabama, where NASA was researching the ability to 3D print a complete rocket engine with little to no post-processing.
With the knowledge gained in the program, he returned to University of California at San Diego, where both he and Finch were undergraduate students. In 2013, they launched a project to design, print and test a fully metal 3D-printed engine, making the university the first to accomplish such a feat.The Tri-D rocket, as it was called, was 3D printed using direct metal laser sintering (DMLS) from cobalt chromium on an EOS M270 3D printer. The rocket successfully test-fired with 200 pounds of thrust before Atyam and Finch led their team to design a second engine, the Ignus. Also 3D printed with DMLS, this time on an EOS M280 machine, the Ignus was made from Inconel 718 and was capable of 750 pounds of thrust using a propellant made up of liquid oxygen and kerosene.
Not only did the Ignus test fire successfully multiple times, but in May 2016, the UC San Diego team strapped it to an actual rocket, the Vulcan-1, and sent it off into the air, where the Vulcan-1 became the highest flying sounding rocket powered by a fully 3D-printed engine to date.
Around that time, Atyam and Finch saw the opportunity for a new business. “We saw that we were some early movers in using 3D printing for liquid rocket engines and had many ideas that we could bring to market,” Atyam said. In turn, the pair established Tri-D Dynamics.
3D Printing a Better Rocket Engine
3D printing affords a number of opportunities in the design and construction of rocket engines. On the design front, it's possible to fabricate geometries never before possible with traditional manufacturing techniques. Atyam explained that the engines so far, made up of the rocket's injector and combustion chamber, were designed to be 3D printed in a single piece, meaning that absolutely no assembly would be required.
Additionally, the engine was designed with no overhanging features so as to eliminate the need for support structures. As a result, there is no need to CNC mill away such support structures once the print is complete, saving time, labor and cost.
Because Finch and Atyam began this work as undergraduate students, they believe they weren't hindered by the design thinking of a veteran accustomed to traditional manufacturing techniques and constraints. Rather, they learned how a rocket engine operates and worked backwards, uninhibited by previously learned design principles.
“We tried to optimize characteristics like fluid flow and cooling channels that are inherent to liquid rocket engines,” Finch said. “We tried not to base our designs off of assumptions of what other people had done successfully, but really look at what was needed and create a design based off of that.”
Democratizing the NewSpace Economy
The ability to additively manufacture a rocket engine not only makes it possible to incorporate unique geometries and designs, but may be the only way to manufacture such systems in a reasonable timeframe and at a reasonable cost.
“A lot of the small satellite and cube satellite companies have to piggyback right now on larger launch vehicles, like SpaceX or ULA rockets,” Atyam said. “That leads to long lead times, which have a detrimental effect on the ability of these cube satellite providers to send up the payloads quickly with new technology. With the advancement of computing power and imaging technology, they don't want to wait for more than a year or two years to send the satellites to space to be able to utilize the new technology and try out the new hardware they have.”
Instead of piggybacking on larger launch vehicles, these businesses will turn to smaller, dedicated rockets to send cubesats and small satellites into orbit. “The dedicated launchers are smaller in size than SpaceX rockets,” Atyam said.“Instead of being over 200-ft tall, these dedicated launchers are about 60-ft tall, and the payload is only about 200 kg or less. The idea is that they would be launching as frequently as biweekly or once a week to be able to keep up with their demand for cube satellites will have to get into orbit.”
Launch vehicles equipped with five to 10 rocket engines each means producing 10 rocket engines per week, a pace that traditional manufacturing methods cannot keep up with. By using hybrid AM techniques, however, Tri-D believes that it can keep up with the demand and has filed seven patent applications to prove it.
As Finch elaborated, “The most pertinent need is the reduction of the cost of access to space. [To increase access to space] we see as the most logical step to look at the most costly and complex component of the whole system architecture. The rocket propulsion system itself accounts for anywhere from 2- percent to ⅔ of a launch vehicle's cost, in some cases, and tackling components of that system and trying to reduce the cost significantly is where we think we can make the biggest impact.”
He added, “Basically, we have the ability to reduce the manufacturing costs of creating a thrust chamber assembly by up to 40 percent compared to the use of traditional manufacturing methods. That itself can result in a savings of up to 15 percent of the total production budget of manufacturing a rocket.”
Next Steps for Tri-D
To turn their startup into a fully fledged business, the UC San Diego graduates decided to pursue graduate school at Purdue University, where they could better understand the market, increase their theoretical knowledge of rockets, conduct further research and expand their network. Atyam has just completed his program and Finch will be completing his soon.
This has allowed the duo to focus entirely on the new startup, which is now in the process of building up its business. According to Finch and Atyam, they’ve already secured a partnership with another company in the industry and have submitted two proposals to NASA for its Small Business Innovation Research and Small Business Technology Transfer programs. If they hear positive news in April, they will move onto a Phase I Award under a NASA contract.
Tri-D will have to further demonstrate its technology, performing more hot fire tests and launching more rockets, but Atyam and Finch are confident about the future of the business. They are already looking to expand their team and obtain investments. Interested parties are invited to inquire at info@triddynamics.com.
Once its engines begin to take off, Tri-D has a bright vision for the future. Finch concluded, “Deepak and I have talked at length about what our own personal goals are for what we want to see done in the space industry within our lifetime. We obviously both really believe space is an important arena to advance, and along with other companies aiming to bring down the cost of access to space, we hope to democratize access to space and get a really thriving space economy up and running within our lifetimes.”
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