NASA mechanical design engineer Richard Hagen, left, and ORNL researcher Michael Borish inspect a lunar rover wheel prototype that was 3D printed at the Manufacturing Demonstration Facility.
Members of the team that printed the rover wheel display the result in front of the laser powder bed printer where it was created at the Manufacturing Demonstration Facility.
Despite enabling a more complex spoke pattern and spoke locking features for the wheel, 3D-printing simplified and reduced the cost of the wheel design and made final assembly easier.
ORNL researchers at the Manufacturing Demonstration Facility monitored the printing of the prototype lunar wheel as two lasers melted metal powder to build it up, layer by layer.