AgniKul Cosmos, a spacetech start-up with its headquarters in Chennai, said the world’s first single piece 3D printed engine had successfully completed a test fire.At the Vertical Test Facility at Thumba Equatorial Rocket Launching Station (TERLS) of the Vikram Sarabhai Space Center, tests on AgniKul’s Agnilet engine were carried out (VSSC).
The test was carried out with support from ISRO and IN-SPACe, a single-window nodal organisation for marketing and regulating space-tech players. Its goal was to confirm whether rocket engines could technically be produced as a single piece of hardware.
The Agnilet engine was entirely designed and manufactured in India, and it was successfully tested for the first time in 2021 at IIT Madras. The design and production process used by the company has been approved by this new test at TERLS. Additionally, this marks a significant development for India’s 3D printing industry.
Recently, AngiKul was granted a patent for their single-piece 3D-printed rocket design and production. At the IIT Madras Research Park, the business also presented Rocket Factory-1, the nation’s first rocket facility for mass production of such rocket engines. The brand-new state-of-the-art production facility houses top-tier equipment for complete rocket engine manufacturing under one roof.
