Rapid Production of Complex Spacecraft Components Using Hybrid Additive Manufacturing

The high cost of launching spacecraft is dependent on their mass and volume. Conventional spacecraft structure and subsystems typically follow conventional design and manufacturing methods. This results in isolated design criteria for structure and subsystem thereby creating added parasitic weight to accomplish subsystem requirements. Conventional small satellite architectures are based on cubes, which necessitates force-fit design and poor volume usage. The long schedule for spacecraft integration and assembly limits the response to new mission goals and creates risk for meeting launch windows. By reducing the schedule for creating structure and subsystems, better responsiveness can be achieved for specific mission goals and target launch windows can more readily be met. Our proposed solution is to use advanced design and advanced manufacturing methods to create multifunctional structures that serve more than one design purpose. This may be a chassis that is also a waveguide, or a subframe that is also a fluid flow path, or an enclosure that is also a heat exchanger. Our hybrid additive manufacturing process uses additive metal and CNC machining in a 6 ft x 12 ft build area to produce finished components with faster delivery times than conventional manufacturing processes. After a design concept is created and approved by stakeholders, analysis efforts will include design for mechanical and functional metrics and design for producibility using Computer Aided Design (CAD) and Computer Aided Engineering (CAE).