Additive manufacturing is a growing field that provides new opportunities to enhance design and manufacturability and decrease cost and development time for new products. Utilizing additive manufacturing in spacesuit design can pose a challenge to maximize the benefits while meeting the rigorous requirements necessary for the safety of the astronauts wearing the spacesuits. There are many additive manufacturing processes available with a number of materials that can be used. Each process and material can have a place in spacesuit design depending on the context and requirements for use. Some materials are inexpensive and quick to print, making them ideal for development and prototyping. Other processes and materials may be more expensive, but can produce flight quality parts faster than other manufacturing processes. David Clark Company has been using additive manufacturing in design and development of spacesuits for some recent projects including lunar boots and IVA helmets. Additive manufacturing provides the ability to rapidly develop and evaluate parts that otherwise would be infeasible to prototype to the same level of fidelity. Testing of the additive manufactured parts for these projects shows that the technology in the processes and materials is of sufficient maturity that it can be practical to use additive manufacturing for production, flight quality parts; realizing the benefits and maintaining the safety of the products.
Green et al. (Sun,) studied this question.