Markus Kayser - Solar Sinter Project

Allan
2 HN recommenders · recommended in 2 months, 2014–2025
YouTube
693K views · 15 years ago · demo · dated

Markus Kayser's Solar Sinter Project shows a machine that uses focused sunlight to fuse desert sand, layer by layer, into 3D objects of glass. It is a prototype of making things from sun and sand.

HN keeps citing it as the idea of 3D printing with sunlight and sand, from desert construction to lunar bricks.

“Seems like an opportunity to use sun and sand to construct 3D-printing oases in the middle of nowhere.”
Industrial designComputational & parametric design
#markuskayser#solarsinter#3dprinting#sand#fabrication

7 comments from Hacker News

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@soulofmischief2025 · in “University of Alabama Engineer Pioneers New Process for Recycling Plastics”
Check out Markus Kayser's solar sinter :) ▶ this video
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@michaelxia2014 · in “3D Print with Sand (2011) [video]”
Submitted the video to Hacker News.
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@mitthrowaway22025 · in “Lunar soil machine developed to build bricks using sunlight”
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
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@Log_out_2024 · in “Show HN: Homemade automated solar concentrator”
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.
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@qikInNdOutReply2022 · in “Solar Metal Smelter”
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.
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@avmich2020 · in “Australia fast-tracks plan to send solar power to Singapore”
Like this? ▶ this video A popular video a few years ago which demonstrate, uhm, a 3D printing of models out of sand.
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@mmjaa2017 · in “The World Is Running Out of Sand”
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?
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