Graphics Reference
In-Depth Information
Solar Sintering is ecologically ingenious. It runs on solar energy; the print-
er's “laser” is concentrated sunlight. Sand, its raw material, is one of the most
naturally occurring and abundant substances on the planet. When sand is
melted, it becomes glass, a strong and versatile material that doesn't need addi-
tional chemical additives or glues. If a printed glass object were discarded and
left behind in the desert, it would eventually come full circle and be ground
back into sand.
When I watched the video, I realized that Solar Sintering could be the
answer for a problem I used to puzzle over when I was a child. I grew up in
Israel, a country of abundant sandy plains. Building roads on top of desert
sand is expensive and dificult; sand doesn't provide a stable base and as
it shifts and blows around, roads get covered up and eventually become
impassible.
When I was a child, I wondered why the government didn't just melt the
desert sand into hardened strips that cars could drive over, a sort of “glass
road.” Imagine if Markus's Solar Sinterer were equipped with gigantic wheels,
attached to a GPS, and put to work printing roads in desert areas. Perhaps
a human “crew boss” could oversee roaming road crews of Solar Sinterers.
Shifting sands would no longer be a problem. Instead, loose sand would serve
as a useful raw material, a glass tar. NASA is exploring similar processes for
3D printing structures on the moon from lunar sand.
In a perfect world, all manufacturing would be as ecofriendly as Solar
Sintering. Unfortunately, most manufacturing runs on petroleum-based
energy. Factories and global transportation networks (called supply chains)
leave behind an enormous carbon footprint which contributes to the build-up
of greenhouse gases.
The manufacturing process is just part of the problem, however. Garbage
is another environmentally disastrous side-effect of mass production. Cheap
and abundant mass-produced products are made, literally, to be thrown away.
The problem is that there is no “away.” Glass and paper can be (and are)
recycled. However, most mass-produced plastics are not recycled, nor do they
biodegrade peacefully back into the environment. Disposable plastic products
linger for decades, illing landills and polluting our oceans.
3D printing technologies offer us a cleaner and greener way to manufacture
things. Yet no technology is innately green. What matters is how it is put to use.
