As the space industry changes from Old Space to an era of New Space, research and development about small launch vehicles continue to accelerate. One of the biggest goals of small launch vehicles is cost-effectiveness. Since traditional manufacturing methods for large launch vehicles are not economically feasible, attempts are being made to cut costs using advanced technologies like additive manufacturing, also known as 3D printing.

 A combustor of a liquid fuel launch vehicle, one of the examples of such attempts, is difficult to manufacture with conventional methods due to its complex shape. Currently, most additive manufacturing cases of combustors use the PBF method, which is not fit for multi-material. Thus, most of them adopt a method of printing a thin inner wall with a single nickel-based material or printing only the inner cooling channel with a copper-based alloy and then cladding the outside with a nickel-based alloy.

 This study aimed to manufacture a multi-material combustor using DED additive manufacturing technology. It includes making samples for performance evaluation of multi-materials and optimizing the printing process, part design, and printing tool path. On that basis, we produced a multi-material 3-ton methane combustor using LP-DED additive manufacturing technology.