Industry/University Cooperative Projects Center
| Agilent | COBE Cardiovascular | Ford Motor Company | Lockheed-Martin |
| Ball Aerospace | Coors | IBM | Micro Motion |
| Ball Packaging | CTD | ICAST | Nastic Actuator Development |
| Boeing | CONMED | Intel | Sikorsky |
Ball Aerospace
Metal Forming in Space
Structural construction in space requires the delivery of structural material from earth. This typically means that a good deal of volume and weight is required for delivery of these structural members.
An alternative approach would be to deliver just the raw flat materials needed for the structural elements. Additionally, one would be required to delivertools that will allow for the construction of structural elements from these same flat raw materials.
This could have the advantage of dramatically reducing the required volume of materials delivered into space.
An example of a tool that can be used in construction is the Melpar Tubomatic machine which converts flat stock into tubing. End forming processes and the use of special clip-on connectors will then allow for complex space structures to be assembled while in space. Thus, requiring small delivery volumes.
The project will involve determining appropriatetools to use to convert flat stock into structural elements and to develop some connector technology to allow for the assembly of these structural elements.