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The Use Of 3d Printing To Enable High Altitude Balloon Missions, Jeremy Straub
The Use Of 3d Printing To Enable High Altitude Balloon Missions, Jeremy Straub
Jeremy Straub
The 3D printing technology allows the low-cost creation of structures based on user-defined configuration parameters. Unlike other plastic-forming technologies, there is no tooling cost related to the creation of a mold. Because of this, highly-customized structures can be created with a minimum production quantity of one, allowing adaptation to individual mission needs (for a single-HAB mission) or the change of the structure across a multi-unit run (e.g., to test various configurations or as part of a study requiring multiple payloads with different configurations).
This paper considers the mission possibilities enabled by the use of 3D printing for HAB structures. These …