Abundance Report: Solar 3D Printer Builds from Sand
Markus Kayser – Solar Sinter Project from Markus Kayser on Vimeo.
Markus Kayser has built a 3D printer that uses sun light to turn sand into 3D glass objects. Free energy making things from the free materials.
He calls the device a Solar Sinter. The process works by spreading thin layers of sand then focusing a beam of light with a magnifying lens on a point to melt the sand turning it into glass. The object is built up a layer at a time. The movement and focusing of the beam is powered with photovoltaic but the high energy melting is done with a magnifying lens. This allows the device to be very low cost and potentially long lasting
A rover equipped with a solar sinter could be placed in deserts on earth or another planet and let run making useful objects. Even though this device makes crude items similar 3D printing technology has been used to make high precision objects of many materials.
In addition to a 3D printer, which is an additive technique, he has made a solar cutter which is a subtractive technique.
Markus Kayser – Sun Cutter Project from Markus Kayser on Vimeo.
Solar Cutter
3D Printer / CNC head positioning ideas
Ideas to make high precision low cost head positioning systems for 3D printer / fabricators / CNC machines. Precision stepper motors are expensive. What if you could use cheap analog motor? They could be very fast and cheap.
Electrical Resistance
Run a length of wire along each axis of the printer / fabricator / CNC and measure the resistance at the head position. Using a table of actual resistance measurements on the device could increase accuracy and even heat differences could be taken into account. This could be extremely accurate and low cost.
Optical
Optical is another approach, this is how mechanical mice and mane printers function. Using a digital camera with distance measurements on a scale printed from a long format printer could make the device very fast and accurate. Using optics the accuracy could increased fine precision even with cheap webcam sensors.
RF Triangulation
Mounting an RF transmitter on the head and antennas at the corners of the tracks could allow triangulation of the head to extremely high precision even over very large distances. This is the same technique used by GPS and cell phone towers. The precisions scales with size and frequency transmitted.
Electrical Balancing
Using opposing electrical currents to create a balance for any location along the rail. With the correct calibration this can be very accurate plus provide very fast movement.
3D Printer Brings Vision to the Poor
The same week that I found all the articles on 3D printers I found an amazing example that could dramatically improve life for billions of people in developing countries who cannot access, nor afford, prescription glasses.
Last weekend I went to get a new optical prescription so I could buy new contacts. The technician used fully automatic devices to check me for glaucoma and calculated my prescription. I had experienced the glaucoma device but the prescription device was new to me. I instantly knew how it worked just from seeing it. The machine reflects a pattern off your eye then adjusts lenses in the device until the reflected pattern matches the original. Incredibly, quick easy and cheap!
My mind raced through all the potential innovations stemming from this device. I came up with a long list which I’ll get to in a moment. What I am more excited about is an extremely innovative application of this same technique. In 2002 a student at MIT used a similar technique as part of a system to make glasses for the poor. This was exactly what I had thought of. This innovation went from an idea in 2002 to commercial usable device in 2006. That is amazing.
One of the reasons the idea was developed in such a short time was the use of a 3D printer to create a prototype. But probably even more important was it solved a previously impossible problem and opened up a gigantic market. There are 1 billion people who need inexpensive glasses. 
There are two obstacles to providing eye glasses to people in developing countries. Read more
