Rocket engine printed on a 3D printer

Three-dimensional printing technologies are developing steadily and are finding more and more diverse applications. If initially 3D-printers were suitable only for creating layouts and prototypes, now it is quite possible to print at once functional details.

Here is a recent example of serious 3D printing capabilities: a friend with the nickname RocketMoonlighter demonstrated a liquid rocket engine (LRE) printed on a 3D printer.

In the amateur rocket science, mainly solid-fuel rocket engines are used. The main reason for this is the simplicity of the design. At the same time, liquid engines, allowing to achieve the best performance, are inaccessible to the ordinary lover, as they are much more complicated and require special equipment for manufacturing.

3D printers are just perfect for the production of parts of irregular shape, with a complex internal structure. But is there any material suitable for 3D printing that can withstand the temperature and pressure inside the rocket engine? There is a technology of direct laser sintering ( Direct metal laser sintering ), which allows printing directly from metal powder, and the finished model hardly differs in strength from a single piece of metal.
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The heart of the engine - the combustion chamber - is printed by direct laser sintering of stainless steel. Naturally, at home this is still unrealistic, so an order was made by one of the companies engaged in industrial 3D printing. The cost of the order amounted to several thousand dollars.