The goal of this program is to demonstrate the use of Ultrasonic Additive Manufacturing (UAM) solid state metal 3D printing to provide in-space, on-demand manufacturing capabilities to support the unique challenges of long-duration human spaceflight. Previous and ongoing work in NASA SBIR programs has demonstrated the ability to 3D print quality metal parts using UAM. The goal of this Phase I program is to demonstrate the feasibility to reduce the size and power consumption of current UAM machine technology to 3D print aerospace grade aluminums for In-Space manufacturing. In fact, for the UAM process, operation in a micro-gravity environment contributes to power reduction goals expressed in recent NASA documents (NASA, 2016).
