Enhancing Additive Manufacturing of Lunar Regolith Ceramics Through Magnetic Beneficiation

Lunar regolith is a potential primary resource for In-situ Fabrication and Repair during future crewed lunar exploration missions. Leveraging lunar regolith for in-situ additive manufacturing enables the rapid production of on-demand items, spare parts, instruments, and infrastructure components for lunar bases. This approach offers cost reductions in lunar base construction and maintenance while expanding resource utilization. Among the various AM techniques proposed for in-situ fabrication with lunar regolith, stereolithography-based additive manufacturing stands out as a promising method to create precise, high-density, and robust ceramic parts from lunar regolith. However, the heterogeneous mineral composition of LR presents challenges in its processability through stereolithography-based additive manufacturing, resulting in increased printing time and compromised sinterability. This research aims to investigate the influence of the preliminary beneficiation of the lunar regolith on its printability through digital light processing. Our findings demonstrate that the magnetic beneficiation of lunar regolith can dramatically improve its printability using stereolithography-based additive manufacturing by effectively decreasing exposure time for printing 1 layer from 60 to only 5-10 s, which in turn leads to a 10-fold reduction in printing time. Consequently, this enables the efficient and rapid production of high-dense (94%) and mechanically robust ceramic parts using lunar regolith feedstock. Preliminary mechanical testing showed that ceramic parts 3D-printed with magnetically-beneficiated lunar regolith exhibit a median flexural strength of 120 MPa.