NASA Regolith Collector

Last crawled date: 1 year, 10 months ago

This concept is very simple consisting of aluminum and plastic parts. It's designed to be used on a robotic arm. Currently, the design uses laser cut sheet metal parts held together by nuts and bolts. Perhaps spot welding would be better to save some weight and for simplicity. Also, using aluminum rods and joints could save additional weight. The plastic parts are the sample container holder and compaction assembly.

The operating principle is using a tube with an internal screw to extract regolith from the lunar surface and filtered out through holes in the cylinder. Excess regolith larger than 2 cm will continue to travel past the filter and falls off the back of the tube.

The filtered regolith first separates the dust then the particles less than 2 cm into the hopper/chute then falls into the sample container. The compaction assembly consists of a sample container holder suspended by 4 tension springs and compacted and by a vibration motor to get the desired result.

The cylinder/tube is rotated by a stepper motor. I chose to use the Nema 14 bipolar motor with a power consumption of 3.75 W. https://www.omc-stepperonline.com/hybrid-stepper-motor/nema-14-bipolar-18deg-23ncm-326ozin-05a-75v-35x35x42mm-4-wires-14hs17-0504s.html Based on testing, the motor could be downsized if less torque is required.

For the vibration motor, I chose to use a brushed dc motor of power approximately 1.5 W. Total power will be less than 6 W. https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00977HHVW/ref=twister_B07GR6KJSP?th=1

The compaction assembly ensured that fine/loose regolith and rocks less than 2 cm are nicely packed in the sample container until the mass and volume requirements are met.

Samples only come in contact with aluminum components and the stoppers at the front of the unit ensures that samples are collected in the upper 10 cm of lunar regolith.

A camera can be positioned at the back of the unit that views down the tube to see the sample before depositing. The contents of the sample container can also be easily seen. If the sample viewed in the tube is undesirable, it can be rejected by reversing the direction of the screw to dump the regolith back on the surface. The robotic arm can then move the assembly to a new location to try again.

It is possible to complete the collection process in a few minutes. My concept is not affected by temperature or hard vacuum. The electrical connector is connected to the robotic arm for power. When sample collection is complete, the tube can be emptied by reversing the screw direction again.

Thanks to NASA and GrabCad for this design exercise, I really enjoyed it. Good luck to everyone and if you like my concept, don't forget to click the like button. :)

Check out my other entry:
https://grabcad.com/library/nasa-simplified-collector-1