NASA/Made in Space 3d printer bed

I know the ISS printer prints ABS, but my biggest question is does anyone know what the bed is made of?
I'm curious how they manage their adhesion and release. The photos seem to be black for what thats worth.

Also incidentally none of the articles about the involvement of the astronauts mention using a dremel or other tool to remove raft/crud/etc (they do mention maintenance and reloading of cartridges, and the picture of a ratchet looks great, but was it printed fully assembled and working or not?

Is there a more technical document than than the basic specs in the popular press?

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Setup: Prusa/Ramps 1.4 running Marlin v1.1.9 firmware. Hosted by XenialPup64 7.5 (Linux) running Repetier-host v2.1.3. Slicing: Cura. Design: OpenSCAD 2018.09.05, Blender, Inkscape. Mesh Repair: Meshlab, Netfab Basic.

The only black print-surface I know is BuildTak, a friend of mine uses this and he has put it on all of his printers including the one we use on the art academy.

This is it:
[www.buildtak.eu]

Also, there is a carbon kind of print-surface, not completely black, but still could be called black, this one:
[3dprintingindustry.com]

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http://www.marinusdebeer.nl/

Could be carbon fiber.

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"carbon fibre" only describes the reinforcing material, not the resin (which is ultimately the bed adhesion surface), but for weight reasons it could be something like PEI (polyetherimide) sheet (this may also be what BuildTak is) with carbon fibre core (or the standard dyed black Ultem glass fibre sheet). It would certainly make sense that for weight it was reinforced with CF. Thanks for the guesses.

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Setup: Prusa/Ramps 1.4 running Marlin v1.1.9 firmware. Hosted by XenialPup64 7.5 (Linux) running Repetier-host v2.1.3. Slicing: Cura. Design: OpenSCAD 2018.09.05, Blender, Inkscape. Mesh Repair: Meshlab, Netfab Basic.

Try contacting Made In Space since they are the ones that made the printer.

Here's a link of the experiment:
[www.nasa.gov]
But they don't write about the technical specifications of the printer.
However the whole system has to weigh as little as possible (inclusind the printer bed).

It might be a glass filled resin, like Ultem or polyphthalamide. I've seen similar "disposable" build plates on Statasys machines; the surface is like rough sand paper and the entire plate can be flexed a little bit to pop parts off. Having fibers in the bed helps with adhesion a lot.

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 12/21/2014 10:16PM by Generic Default.