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Imagine that you're stationed at a lunar colony, some decades in the future, when your moon monkey wrench breaks. You have two choices: wait for a replacement tool in the next cargo shipment a month away, or just make one on the spot. The do-it-yourself option recently got a boost, when researchers demonstrated the feasibility of 3-D custom parts printing using raw materials available on the moon.
想象一下，你驻扎在月球殖民地上，几十年过后，你的活动扳手断裂了。你有两个选择：等待一个月后的货物托运送来替代工具，或者在月球上动手制作。当研究人员表明了3-D定制配件打印机的可行性（能采用月球上的原材料制作成品），自己动手制作一时风行起来。
The team, which included researchers from NASA and Washington State University, worked with a 3-D printer that melts powdered feedstock with lasers and then layers the melted powder into solid structures. Real lunar regolith is too precious to melt down, so they fed the printer with imitation lunar soil—a close chemical match to the real thing.
研究小组包括来自美航局和华盛顿州立大学的研究人员，他们共同研制出一种3-D 打印机，这种打印机能够用激光技术溶化粉末状的原料，然后将溶化的粉末分层次地重组成固体结构。月球表面风化层材料十分珍贵，不宜将其溶化，因此他们模仿月球土壤作为替代——一种接近真实材料的化学物。
In the demo, the researchers produced cylinders of various sizes and reported that the melted regolith was free of cracks. The research appears in the Rapid Prototyping Journal.
在这个演示中，研究人员生产了各种尺寸的汽缸，并称这种溶化原料完全没有裂缝。这项研究发表在《快速样机成型杂志》上。
The printed parts are still a bit rough around the edges, though—they resemble rusty lengths of iron. One of the team members remarked that “It doesn't look fantastic, but you can make something out of it.”
尽管印制元件的边缘部分仍有些粗糙，但他们还是重组了一节生锈的铁。其中一名小组成员评论道：“它看起来并不很棒，但至少你能用它来制造东西。”
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