Additively manufactured mirrors for CubeSats

Abstract

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Freeform active mirror designed for additive manufacturing

“…Since the reduction of the number of components has high priority, the reflective surface should be integrated in the deformable structure. Therefore, materials with good machining and polishing properties are favored, the available options were already investigated by C. Atkins [7]. Choices are restricted to aluminum alloys (ie.…”

Lightweighting design optimisation for additively manufactured mirrors

“…Within this study, to mitigate the risk of printing in an unknown orientation, the decision was made to print vertically as the previous results were within the desired optical performance outlined within Atkins et al 2019 . 12 The decision to print in the vertical orientation influenced the lattice selection. The favoured BCCz lattice, with the additional struts normal to the optical surface, could not be printed in a vertical orientation without internal support material, likewise a BCC lattice printed at 45 • would incur a similar challenge -as demonstrated in Figure 3 b).…”

“…This paper has discussed the design logic for the fabricated AM mirror described in the accompanying paper Atkins et al 2019 12 and three different routes that could be applied in the future to optimise the design in terms of lightweighting percentage and form error. One of the key challenges in adopting AM within mirror fabrication is understanding the new production chain and the need to consider design requirements, AM design rules, AM fabrication and traditional machining, at the onset of the project to ensure a successful and innovative component (Section 2).…”

“…This paper describes the design and analysis of an AM mirror specified for use as a primary mirror in a 3 U CubeSat telescope for Earth observation. The initial design, which was fabricated to investigate different AM materials and post-processing methods (diamond turning versus polishing), 12 is presented in Section 2 and includes a description of how the AM design incorporated restrictions imposed by AM manufacture and traditional machining. Section 3 describes different approaches in which the AM mirror design can be optimised to improve functionality -i.e.…”

An additive manufactured CubeSat mirror incorporating a novel circular lattice

“…The mirror dimensional requirements are based upon a nano-satellite (nanosat; CubeSat) payload structure designed for Earth observation (EO) and builds upon previous AM mirror development for CubeSats. 17,18 This paper will present the mirror requirements (mechanical and optical) for the design (Section 2), the first iteration of the mirror design incorporating a novel circular lattice (Sections 3 and 4), subsequent iterations of the design to ensure compliance with build guidelines (Section 5), analysis using a finite element model (Section 6) and concluding with a summary and and description of future work (Section 7).…”