Desert Manufacturer - Make: 3D Printing - page 165

Desert Manufacturer 18

Markus Kayser's sand and sun 3D printer.

W RITTEN BY L AURA K INIRY

Think that deserts lack resources? Not to
Markus Kayser. The MIT research assistant
with a master's in product design has created
a 3D printer that can make glass objects us-
ing a desert's two most abundant resources:
sun and sand. “I began asking myself,” says
Kayser, “what if I could build a machine
which would act as a kind of translator be-
tween the two?” His Solar Sinter ( Figure 18-1 )
is the direct result.

Sinter uses the sun's rays as a laser and sand
rather than resins to create exact physical
replicas of his digital designs. The printer in-
cludes a large Fresnel lens that's always fac-
ing the sun (by way of an electronic sun-
tracking device), stepper motors to move
and load its sandbox, and two 60-watt pho-
tovoltaic panels that provide electricity to
charge the battery that drives the motors
and electronics of the machine.
His first time out with Solar Sinter, Kayser
produced both a bowl and a tile, as well as a
sculptural piece. “Once I input the design I'm
trying to produce via an SD card,” he says,
“the machine reads its code and then moves
the sandbox along to the correct x and y co-
ordinates at 1 mm per second, while the lens
focuses a light beam that produces temper-
atures between 1,400°C and 1,600°C, more
than enough to melt the sand.” The objects
( Figure 18-2 ) are built layer by layer over the
course of several hours.

Figure 18-1. The Solar Sinter

Based on a type of 3D printing known as se-
lective laser sintering (SLS), Kayser's Solar