Allan
5 HN mentions · mentioned in 5 months, 2017–2025
6:07 · 693K views · Jun 28, 2011
Markus Kayser's Solar Sinter project video shows a machine in the desert using sunlight and sand to 3D print glass objects. It is a short demonstration of desert manufacturing from renewable energy and local material.
HN references it as prior art whenever solar sintering, sand printing or sunlight-based manufacturing comes up.
5 comments from Hacker News
In an old game of mine, there was a monastry driving on wheels through the dessert. The monks spend there days collecting sunlight, smelting sand into "glasstrees", which would then use daylight to collect water (silica gel), pump it up at night (using optic fibres for transport, salt water for storing heat, glass wool for isolation and distills to re-capture the nightly water vapors).. creating a ecosystem in its shade. Nearly all of it made from glas. While the premise might be idiotic scifantasy, the idea to terraform in situ with what you got, is quite neat. [LINK] this video Solar Sintering by Markus Kayser Just imagine this driving around on mars, with huge halftransparent balloons over it, which like a parabolic mirror pre-collects the light, printing structures for future ecology with the little light that world offers from the material at hand.
You can also sinter sand into 3d structures. this video In theory if you could manufacture lenses and optical fibers, you could 3d print active solar powered structures anywhere where there is enough sun. Imagine a 3d printed little bottlegarden, with a water collector using a heated silicagel cycle printed in situ on mars. Still low atmospheric pressure, but warm and wetter.
Seems like an opportunity to use sun and sand to construct 3D-printing oases in the middle of nowhere. this video Wonder why this isn't working out as the "new construction technique" hit success that it seems, with a little optimisation, it could be?
It's probably something similar in concept to Markus Kayser's solar sinterer[1], but with the light being focused onto an optical fiber bundle whose endpoint is moved around in X and Y, rather than moving a basket of regolith. [1] this video
Like this? this video A popular video a few years ago which demonstrate, uhm, a 3D printing of models out of sand.