Say you’re an astronaut stuck on Mars in the near future and your oxygen pump fails and you didn’t bring spare parts – what are you gonna do? Simple…no need to wait 7 months for a supply ship to arrive…just use your 3D printer to fabricate the required parts.
3D printers have advanced far beyond creating the lawn sprinklers in ABS that we mentioned just a few years ago, and can now fabricate metal parts as well, including stainless steel. You might be well be gasping for air while the CAD-driven printing process finishes your pump parts, and at 60 HRb the metal in the parts will only be 1/3 as hard as AISI 1050 carbon steel, but it will likely be sufficient for your purposes.
Amazing stuff…it should soon be possible to print items that contain embedded wires & electronic components, such as radios and cell phones.
Shapeways website
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