3-D Printed Rocket Engine Blasts Off In India

cusco writes: Indian company Agnikul used a 3-D printer from German company EOS to print the engine in one solid piece over the course of 72 hours. While other companies are using 3-D printers extensively this is the first one-piece engine printed. The advantages of this approach, besides speed of construction, include elimination of the welds that so frequently cause engine failure. The single-engine technology demonstration rocket produced 6 kilonewtons of thrust, and was used in a configuration roughly equivalent to the company's future second stage. Their planned commercial product will have 7 of these engines in the first stage, launching the single-engine second stage. https://spectrum.ieee.org/3d-p...

Assembling the rest of the rocket and integrating the engine took roughly two weeks. The company says that opens the door to providing low-cost, “on-demand” launch services to operators of small satellites, which otherwise need to wait for a ride share on a bigger rocket.

The big challenge now will be going from a single engine to a cluster of seven on Agnibaan’s first stage, says cofounder and CEO Srinath Ravichandran. This raises all kinds of challenges, from balancing thrust across the engines at lift-off to managing engine plume interactions when the engines gimbal to alter the trajectory. “But these are problems that people have figured out,” he says. “We believe that we should just be able to fine-tune it for our mission and go.”

The company is currently building facilities to carry out ground tests of engine clusters, says Ravichandran, and is targeting its first orbital launch for this time next year.