0191-9067/80/040299-18$02.00/0 Copyright ® 1980 SUNSAT Energy Council AUTOMATED BEAM BUILDER UPDATE WALTER K. MUENCH Grumman Aerospace Corporation Abstract — With an eye on the future, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) has been funding study and development contracts to determine the feasibility of constructing large volume, lightweight structures in space. This would include deployable, erectable and fabricatable space structures, depending upon the size of the structure to be constructed and its ultimate utilization. One such approach, space fabrication of large space structures, has been under study by several aerospace companies. Early in 1977, Grumman Aerospace Corporation was awarded a contract to design, develop, manufacture and test a machine which would automatically produce a basic building block aluminum beam. This ground demonstration beam builder was delivered to NASA-MSFC in October. 1978 where it is in operation today producing aluminum beams for structural static and dynamic tests, neutral buoyancy structural assembly simulations, and other demonstrational purposes. From mid-1977 to the present. Grumman, having recognized the need for composite beams, has been conducting various significant critical technological process development tests required to produce an automated composite beam builder. Both these efforts and their current status are discussed in this paper. 1. INTRODUCTION In-house study efforts at Grumman during the early 1970s indicated that a machine which could automatically produce beams in space would be a likely candidate requirement for construction of large space structures, such as a solar power satellite. Further study under a seven-month contract with NASA (1) indicated that near-term feasibility demonstration of such a machine which would produce aluminum beams was possible. Next, a competition was held to build such a machine, and Grumman was named the winner (2). The work performed, including designing, developing, manufacturing and testing of the first ground demonstration aluminum “beam builder,” is discussed in some detail in the following. When the effort associated with this aluminum beam builder was well underway, recognition of the need for a machine which would produce composite beams encouraged us to start investigating the technological development necessary to do this. Grumman has been conducting various significant critical process development tests from mid-1977 to the present time. NASA-MSFC has just awarded us a contract to design, develop, manufacture and test a ground demonstration composite beam cap fabricator. Our effort to date is also discussed in this paper.
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