A Solar-Powered 3D Printer Prints Glass From Sand

Tx-0 writes in with a story in Colossal Art & Design. From the article: "Industrial designer and tinkerer Markus Kayser spent the better part of a year building and experimenting with two fantastic devices that harness the sun's power in some of the world's harshest climates. The first he calls a Sun Cutter, a low-tech light cutter that uses a large ball lens to focus the sun's rays onto a surface that's moved by a cam-guided system. ... Next, Kayser began to examine the process of 3D printing. Merging two of the deserts most abundant resources, nearly unlimited quantities of sand and sun, he created the Solar Sinter, a device that melts sand to create 3D objects out of glass."

Comments

Fonts

[Anonymous Coward]

But can it do sans serif?

Re:Fonts

[parkrrrr]

No, it only does suns serif.

Re:Fonts

[RoverDaddy]

Unfortunately it only does Cosmic Sands.

Re:Fonts

[Crudely_Indecent]

and sands serif

Cam-guided?

[Anonymous Coward]

So, cam-guided, as in cam-guided or CAM-guided? PLEASE, editors, do your jobs.

Re:Cam-guided?

[Qzukk]

Or "cam" as in "camera", which was what I first thought.

I'm guessing you were thinking this kind of CAM, since you only linked the mechanical one.

Re:Cam-guided?

[Nadaka]

Its a computer assisted machining using a camera as input and a set of camber arms for positioning. Did I miss any other use of the "cam" that could apply?

Re:Cam-guided?

[Opportunist]

When I read "do your jobs", my first thought was "Wait, they have their own? And who the hell would want to do him?"

What would be really cool

[xzvf]

Set a bunch of these loose in the Sahara printing out solar panels.

Re:What would be really cool

[pnot]

Set a bunch of these loose in the Sahara printing out solar panels.

The Sahara Solar Breeder Foundation is aiming at something rather similar: "Large scale/low cost production of solar-grade silicon from desert sand," on a truly impressive scale. It remains to be seen whether they can find the money and political will to get it on track, though.

Re:What would be really cool

[Hadlock]

I, for one, welcome our solar powered, glass road building overlords.

Sun-Cutter?

[snspdaarf]

But, can you use it to incinerate ants?

Re:Sun-Cutter?

[Arancaytar]

That is a great idea; sharks are notoriously scarce in the desert.

Re:Sun-Cutter?

[xclr8r]

Please don't give SyFy channel any more ideas.

Handy for extra-Terra construction?

[Nethemas the Great]

I wonder how "portable" this sort of concept would be towards outpost construction on the Moon, Mars, etc.? It seems like it has the potential for saving mightily on transporting the "cement" used in other such printable hab concepts.

Re:Handy for extra-Terra construction?

[elrous0]

Well, now that we have some shelter, all we need to live there is oxygen, water, atmospheric pressure, and food.

Re:Handy for extra-Terra construction?

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

It's hard to tell from the pictures exactly how porous that stuff is(it certainly looks rather rough; but it might be fully vitrified in the center with just a cosmetic crust of sand clinging to it); but, in principle, there certainly doesn't seem to be anything fundamentally wrong with using thermally-fused-whatever-mineral-dust-is-local-there as a construction material...

The engineering might well get a bit hairy, especially for the moon, though... Temperatures high enough to sinter the stuff, much less to vitrify it enough to be gas tight, would probably give you a nontrivial amount of evaporation/sublimation in a vacuum(after all, you'd basically be unintentionally running a gigantic vacuum sputtering operation right above your vitrification attempt...)

An unintentional sputtered film of mixed whatever-is-in-lunar-regolith would probably be lousy for lenses and mirrors, and, as it would likely crack into fragments of razor-sharp flintlike material if mechanically disturbed, potentially be murder on robots and astronauts. I'm sure people could figure out ways to at least mitigate the problem; but it wouldn't just be a magic sun+sand=unlimited building scenario.

Re:Handy for extra-Terra construction?

[jellomizer]

I know you are just trying to make some point. But being able to make structures from local sources. Will save a lot of extra shipping. A good size shelter will take the place of a lot of shipments of food, water, and oxygen. And if you could make a "Glass Dome" as part of a unibody design all the better because there will be less points of failure.... Of course I would be happier if I had a Dome within a Dome. In case one or the other broke.

Re:Handy for extra-Terra construction?

[yarnosh]

Because a brittle glass brick structure is exactly what your average astronaut needs to shelter him from he harsh elements....

Re:Handy for extra-Terra construction?

[Arancaytar]

He who lives in a glass house shouldn't throw rocks - or live on a world whose lack of atmosphere means micrometeorites are both deadly and common.

Re:Handy for extra-Terra construction?

[Nethemas the Great]

Clever. However, I do not think we can rule this out based upon that line of thinking. To begin with there's no mention of the present physical properties of this material nor what they could be after refinement. As suggested in many sci-fi novels, micrometeorite damage can be mitigated through ablative foam skins. Further, it doesn't necessarily have to hold a vacuum. It could very well be used for structural purposes, as layer in a system of materials. Since the material is sintered, damage is localized and probably reasonably reparable using the same process used in the original construction. I suspect that the material itself would actually make for an excellent ablative shield from micrometeorite damage. Ironically its best use could quite possibly be as a protective layer against micrometerorites and the harsh environment in general.

Re:Not impressed

[codepunk]

But it still works much better than the one that you built.

Re:Not impressed

[chemicaldave]

I am not impressed, It is just a machine that burns oil.
I am not impressed, It is just a big wheel that turns in the river.
I am not impressed, It is just a circuit that performs calculations.

Re:Not impressed

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

I bet you typed that on 'just a bunch of tiny little switches'. What use could those possibly be?

Can he build houses with that printer?

[ion]

Cool usage of the sun. I wonder if he can build houses with that printer?

Re:Can he build houses with that printer?

[black soap]

Sadly, my first thought was "pyramids and monuments." Houses might be more beneficial to society.

Re:Can he build houses with that printer?

[pz]

Bricks, or reasonable approximations thereto, probably. Whole houses in one go might be difficult, though.

Re:Can he build houses with that printer?

[nschubach]

You could place a long arm on it with one end anchored to the ground and use wheels on the machine to keep it facing the sun. Let it build arches while it tracks the sun across the sand. You could have the machine focus the sun with an oscillator to increase the thickness. The hard part would be supplying sand to melt when it got higher up. I guess some sort of screw elevator would work for that while providing a ramp for the wheel to travel. Of course, one arch would take several days with that method.

Re:Can he build houses with that printer?

[timeOday]

It looks to me like you could build a 1-piece house with nothing but a fresnel lens good enough to sinter sand. Most of the complexity here is the computerized moving table to enable computer-aided design, and the sun tracker - which are very cool, but limit the size of the item constructed, and require solar cells and a computer. With nothing but the lens, you could still melt yourself a nice crude house, or a basin to hold or collect water, or an adobe oven. In practice I suppose you'd at least want a jig to hold the lens to keep the arms from getting too tired :)

Re:Can he build houses with that printer?

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

While your friendly local scientific/industrial materials supplier can hook you up with fancy glass designed not to, the mixture of low-purity glass and embedded mineral bits that this thing is putting out will almost certainly eat pretty much all the UV and much of the visible light. The cancer risk would be essentially nonexistent.

Re:Can he build houses with that printer?

[jellomizer]

But pyramids and monuments can easily get onto earmarks. Oddly enough it is easier politically to push towards building a monument then it is to build houses.

Re:Can he build houses with that printer?

[jellomizer]

TFA didn't say anything about the glass being clear... Actually the examples are very opaque/

Re:Can he build houses with that printer?

[tmosley]

You should only throw a stone if you are in a glass house, and trapped.

Re:Can he build houses with that printer?

[nschubach]

You could create a machine that has a consistent speed based on a variable input (like a water wheel/windmill/steam/Stirling engine [you got the sun already...]) by using centrifugal governors and a conical gear. With enough machinery it could operate almost entirely without solar panels and create repetitive simple shapes like bricks for the actual building. Doing something more complex though and you'll want some programmable mechanism like a computer.

I even wonder if you couldn't set up a mechanical sun tracker simply based on the heat it provides (ie, the sun moves over a plate which expands closing a circuit/friction plate that pushes itself out of the sun, cooling and opening back up.)

Re:Can he build houses with that printer?

[MrTester]

Yes.
And in an ironic twist, it can also make baseballs.

Re:Can he build houses with that printer?

[retroworks]

Yes, but he shouldn't throw stones.

Re:Can he build houses with that printer?

[countertrolling]

Never mind the house.. With all the silicon out there, can he build a super computer powerful enough to play the damn video?? What the hell is up with that?

Re:Can he build houses with that printer?

[angel'o'sphere]

In principle yes, but not with that printer. OTOH, he certainly can build "bricks" with that thing.

Re:Can he build houses with that printer?

[Big_Breaker]

Mother Earth News had a solar tracker in the 70s that worked with sealed gas cylinders. If the leading cylinder got warm it slowed the tracker down. If the following cylinder got warm it sped up. Simple, no electronics tracking.

Personally I'd prefer a daily reset clockwork mechanism if only b/c it's simpler and uses fewer materials. Sealed gas cylinders seem fiddly and complicated. We've been making clocks for a VERY long time including periods with crude materials and no electronics. I might make the clockwork start off from the morning position via a heat based trigger though. That way all the furnaces could be reset manually in the evening and they would all start at the proper time the next morning automatically and largely simultaneously.

Re:Can he build houses with that printer?

[black soap]

Imagine when people start finding unexplainable geometric patterns fused in the sand. I want one of these things, so I can take crop circles to the next level.

Annealing?

[istartedi]

I've got a passing interest in glasswork, and one of the things I learned is that it's more complicated than "melt into mold, let it cool". Glass has to go through a carefully controlled cool-down period so that the molecular structure will set up properly. Otherwise, the resulting object is far more brittle than it should be. If not done properly you can have cracks form during the cooling phase, ruining the object.

Does the incremental deposition solve the annealing problem? Being able to make glass objects without having to carefully control the cool-down would be very nice.

Re:Annealing?

[Techie_79]

Good point, and it isn't discussed in the article or on his website. And what about the impurities in the desert sand?

Re:Annealing?

[smellsofbikes]

I've got a passing interest in glasswork, and one of the things I learned is that it's more complicated than "melt into mold, let it cool". Glass has to go through a carefully controlled cool-down period so that the molecular structure will set up properly. Otherwise, the resulting object is far more brittle than it should be. If not done properly you can have cracks form during the cooling phase, ruining the object.

Does the incremental deposition solve the annealing problem? Being able to make glass objects without having to carefully control the cool-down would be very nice.

I was a glassblower and glass bead artist for a while. Careful cooling is pretty essential for lime glass, which is what we mostly use. It's less important for borosilicates like Pyrex, which is why glass casserole dishes can survive being put onto 200C metal racks in the oven, and it's even less important for fused quartz that's straight silicon dioxide. You can stick a pyrex rod that's less than a centimeter in diameter straight into an oxypropane flame without it splitting or snapping, and I believe you can do the same with a 3 or 4 cm quartz rod. Obviously this stuff isn't pure silicon dioxide, but it's closer to SiO2 than it is to lime glass.

Incremental deposition probably won't solve the annealing problem, but it'll change it: instead of having strain across big areas, you'll have little bits of strain distributed between each layer of glass that's put on so you're liable to get a lot of small cracks through the porous material, rather than one big catastrophic crack. However, all those little cracks generally tend to grow, but that may be somewhat helped by it being an amorphous, impure material: it's harder for cracks to run in long straight lines in crappy heterogenous stuff.

Re:Annealing?

[Anonymous Coward]

Glassblower here.

OP is absolutely correct regarding the distinctions between boro, soda lime, and fused quartz.

The issue here, though, with trying to do this with desert sand is that boro and "raw" silica glasses (SiO2 or a couple of other analogous compositions) present a number of challenges:

- boro requires very, very high temperatures to batch (the term for doping, mixing, and homogenizing a glass) compared to soda lime glasses -- often six hundred to a thousand degrees Fahrenheit higher than soda. This also means that it requires a much higher working temperature, which is why boro is worked in front of a very hot torch, rather than starting from a liquid batch as traditional glasswork is done.

- raw silicates are *extremely* brittle, particularly if not extensively refined (something I'd view as nearly impossible in a desert environment without advanced equipment), and in terms of tensile strength are extremely weak (glass has enormous compression strength, but generally poor tensile strength no matter the formulation, which is why you can stand on a wine glass, but easily break its foot off with your bare hands)

- boro requires, well, boron, for doping. Boron is expensive, and difficult to extract relative to the other raw material in glass. A pound of boro (it's not generally sold that way though) still costs 3-8x as much as a pound of soda lime, even when sourced from high-volume manufacturers

- raw silicate also requires a great deal of refining (hard to do with even the highest concentration Si sands available) or sourcing directly from relatively pure quartz, which is unlikely to be found in non-volcanic regions. Quartz with even slight impurities is very weak, due to a larger number of individual crystalline zones within the larger structure.

This does not make the problem intractable, though. If this glass is being made for anything where optics is unimportant, then soda lime is not a necessity. Soda lime glass was introduced not for manufacturing (though it does improve working time and lower working temperature), but to make the glass more clear (clear glass did not exist prior to the late 19th century, and even then, this "chrystallo" was prone to a condition that caused it to oxidize over time). If this "desert glass" were instead more properly a ceramic (I know I'm pissing off the chemists), it could be doped with the iron naturally found in most sand, as well as bone ash or other calcium, some raw ores, or carbon in the form of coal. These are still MUCH harder to work than a well-refined soda glass, but if this machine could handle them, it could make many, many useful items. A side benefit would be compositions that are much stronger.

EXCEPT!:

Batching any glass or ceramic has to be done very precisely because of the factor called the coefficient of expansion. All materials expand and contract when heated / cooled. Because glass is chrystalline in nature, this is a very important concern. Rather than changing size evenly, glass builds up tremendous stresses between the crystal zones, which is why it often fails catastrophically in heat. If you've ever broken a glass by filling it with a cold liquid immediately after taking it out of the dishwasher, that's what happened. Doping, particularly with materials of unknown composition or COE can seriously compound this problem. You have to ensure homogeneity in any one piece (so one side doesn't expand at a different rate than the other), and a consistency between pieces if they are to be used together.

I eagerly await more news on this device, but would be astounded if there were a simple solution to these problems. Before modern refining and manufacturing techniques, these processes took master craftsmen in large teams to produce what, today, would be considered a vastly inferior material.

Re:Not impressed

[elrous0]

Yeah, but you can use it to burn ants! Isn't that cool?!?

Re:Not impressed

[Afforess]

One must wonder if you really even RTFA, or are just that dense. The 3-d printer using sand and the sun uses widely available resources, in a relatively short time span, to create complex objects, with little/no waste or pollution of any kind. (Exempting the manufacturing of the printer and solar panels themselves). I have not heard of any such similar achievements. The process itself is easy to oversee, (unskilled labor) and seems like it could be scaled up for larger production easily. This process could possibly be used to help start manufacturing on other words, with Mars being mostly sand. What about this achievement is unimpressive, other than your reading comprehension?

Re:de-desertification

[djdanlib]

And what exactly do you suppose would happen if you removed all the sand? You'd still have a desert, just without sand.

Re:de-desertification

[black soap]

I don't think it is ever a good idea to "let a swarm of robots loose."

Re:Not impressed

[Normal Dan]

This process could possibly be used to help start manufacturing on other words, with Mars being mostly sand

This was my thought when I firs saw it. I've always wondered if something like this was possible to do on mars, or the moon. Looks like it might be.

Gotta gotta gotta

[applematt84]

I gotta get me one of those.

OK, read TFA and watch TFV

[istartedi]

It's sintering, and it looks like you end up with lots of little pits and stuff in the finished work. It's also probably a glass-sand aggregate of sorts. They didn't show close-ups of the objects, or any attempt to "finish" them. They might be strong when finished, but not clear.

Re:OK, read TFA and watch TFV

[h4rr4r]

For bricks and other building material it seems like this sort of material should be fine. Assuming it is not too brittle.

Re:de-desertification

[spire3661]

Contrary to popular belief, the desert TEEMS with life. Why would you want to eradicate an entire ecosystem?

Re:de-desertification

[Jeng]

What good is an eco-system if we can't exploit it?

Re:Not impressed

[asylumx]

I just LOLed...

This looks more like a "look what I can do"

[sirwired]

I couldn't watch the video (slashdotted?) but the picture of the object he made looks like a proof-of-concept for solar sintering, not a finely-manufactured object that meets any kind of standard for quality.

Don't get me wrong, this is a really cool machine, but it's more "wow" value right now than something you'd want to buy.

Re:This looks more like a "look what I can do"

[Carnivore]

I've found that for whatever reason, I can't watch embedded Vimeo videos. If you click through to the source page, it works just fine. I'm on Linux with Firefox 5, latest version of Flashplayer for Linux.

Re:This looks more like a "look what I can do"

[Anonymous Coward]

"finely-manufactured" is not usually a requirement for bricks, though. They can be full of pits and voids and still meet an appropriate "standard for quality".

And if someone figures out how to make a brick structure that naturally condenses and stores water in the desert, it wouldn't be half-bad having an automated solar factory that creates bricks endlessly. It could cause a Dune effect...

Re:This looks more like a "look what I can do"

[nschubach]

I think a lot of the look of the object is based on the rather crude focal point of the lenses he setup and the fact that the depth was not fixed (he would skim sand over it seemingly at random with variable depths from the video. If you had a method of putting a finer layer of sand over a more controlled focal area it may come out nicer.

Re:This looks more like a "look what I can do"

[EvilIdler]

Check if you have any aggressive AdBlock settings or similar. I had issues, despite using ClickToPlugin in Safari (which gets the video instead of Flash when available). Turns out trying to filter Flash ads doesn't always work well :)

Awesome prototype anyway. Looks like it took the better part of an evening to create one bowl, though!

Re:This looks more like a "look what I can do"

[cruff]

I have this problem also for embedded Vimeo stuff. Always have to click through, not worth the time to figure out why.

Re:Not impressed

[interkin3tic]

Bob the Super Hamste's great great grandfather once said to the Wright Brothers: "It's not that impressive. It's just a motorized bike that doesn't need to be on the ground."

Re:de-desertification

[JonySuede]

especially if those robots have sand melting capability.

Re:de-desertification

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

You'd arguably have something that made the previous desert look like a verdant paradise... Deserts aren't exactly the world's lushest biomes; but they beat the hell out of an apocalyptic sun-baked glass/sand aggregate layer, which would likely take decades of weathering to support much more than lichens and microbes even if the climate suddenly became moist and temperate...

Re:Not impressed

[Ruke]

While I agree that it's an impressive result, I'm not sure that it's entirely as practical as you make it out to be. Remember, the end result is glass, and not even high-quality glass at that. It's brittle, porous, and there is very little room for quality-control. The things that this machine produces are basically fit to be display-objects only.

Re:Not impressed

[MarkvW]

You are expending too much effort. There are people here who weren't impressed with the memristor either.

Agree with your sentiments, though.

And so it begins...

[Kamiza Ikioi]

I, for one, welcome our new self replicating, desert dwelling overlords.

Does it have an IP adress?

[houghi]

Because then I can finally download a car.

Winner: Young Republicans "Post of the Day" award!

[Overzeetop]

Congratulations. You earned it!

Re:Not impressed

[Jeng]

It's a prototype that is using common desert sand, it's not meant to be practical at this point.

I wonder what he'll be able to put out using higher quality sand with the current design.

Re:Not impressed

[Anonymous Coward]

Bob the Super Hamste's great grandfather also once told CmdrTaco "255 character usernames? Nobody needs more than 20."

Re:Not impressed

[yarnosh]

Um, pretty sure this is not intended for any type of commercial use. Even normal 3D printers are more for prototyping than actual production, as I understand it. The results are rather brittle and you can only use a very specific material. In this case, "glass." So yeah, if you happen to need brittle glass components on Mars... I guess this might help...?

Re:Winner: Young Republicans "Post of the Day" awa

[Jeng]

From the GP's sig.

What good is a police state if I cant rant online about it!

Was just riffing off of his sig, but it is a valid argument if you take it that way.

Re:Not impressed

[yarnosh]

But what useful objects could you possibly make with it? An ash tray? A dildo? I'm not saying this isn't cool, but come on. Lets be real. Equipment used by astronauts is pretty sophisticated and materials are carefully selected for a reason.

Re:Not impressed

[TooMuchToDo]

You can fuse material together to create air-tight shelters, a necessity on other worlds.

Re:Not impressed

[Infiniti2000]

Mod +1 Funny

Revolution

[mrops]

While all those Egyptians were protesting, this guy was tinkering. Sign of a true geek.

High Tech

[Rene S. Hollan]

This is high tech.

Someone once explained to me the difference between low, medium, and high tech:

Low Tech: You can see how it works. Example: a mechanical wristwatch.

Medium Tech: You make the components so small, you can't see how it works. Example: a digital wristwatch.

High Tech: You make it out of the right stuff and in the right shape, and it Just Works. Example: a microwave waveguide.

I submit this also qualifies as high tech.

Re:High Tech

[Ksevio]

By watching the video, it's pretty clear how the basic process works - Giant magnifying glass aimed at the sand melts it.

The moving around to the right location is the complicated part.

Re:High Tech

[Rene S. Hollan]

Yeah, the mechanics are low tech, and the controls medium tech, but I would submit that a Fresnel lens is high-tech, and possibly also the composition of the sand.

Re:Not impressed

[yarnosh]

You can fuse material together to create air-tight shelters, a necessity on other worlds.

It isn't even real glass. It is brittle and porous. You're not going to make an air-tight shelter with it.

Re:Not impressed

[AvitarX]

Not use martian sand as the poster up the thread implied.

In don't want to knock it though, any research into 3-d printers is good, as there time will come.

Skip the commercial blog...

[fotbr]

Original source is here: http://www.markuskayser.com/work/solarsinter/

Math nazi

[mark-t]

...Merging two of the deserts most abundant resources, nearly unlimited quantities of sand and sun....

... for finite values of "unlimited".

Because otherwise it's nowhere close to "unlimited".

Geeze, people... how hard is it to grasp the notion that infinity is... well... infinite.

Re:Math nazi

[markana]

Oh, this is just the use of the word "unlimited" in the cellular carrier sense...

as in, "unlimited data" == 2GB.

Simple.

Re:Not impressed

[TooMuchToDo]

Right. First-generation design doesn't do everything, film at 11.

It's a proof of concept chief. The first cars didn't have 4-5 star crash safety ratings while able to carry you at 80mph while achieving 40mpg (which my wife's Camry Hybrid does)

Re:Not impressed

[bcmm]

I am impressed. Look at what can be achieved with just a big, controllable lens.

A better use

[Anonymous Coward]

A huge amount of energy goes into producing concrete and bricks. In that region most structures are actually a form of mud brick adobe. A series of devices like this could make individual bricks or a robotic machine could follow a programmed path and layer by layer fuse a solid wall out of sand. The structures could last hundreds of years and need little maintenance where as mud brick buildings need constant repair. Allowing for tiny air pockets could add insulation value as well to the walls. It seems a more practical use since the fuses shapes are very rough so it's unlikely any commercial products could be made from them. Durable building materials that could be made for little cost other than the machine itself seems more practical.

Re:A better use

[deadhammer]

They're rough right now, but you'd be surprised how accurate a fully developed industrial process can make a "rough process". At the very least there would be automatic sandblasting of the rough edges.

oh, wait, I'm dead now. that sucks.

[Thud457]

So? If you wreck it, just print a new one. sheesh...

Re:de-desertification

[elsurexiste]

They are already doing something similar. Check here.

Re:Not impressed

[c0lo]

This process could possibly be used to help start manufacturing on other words, with Mars being mostly sand.

Dust-storms - who's gonna clean the lens?

Ball Lenses are fun!

[bughunter]

Ball lenses are handy things, and can be dangerous in direct sunlight - especially larger ones.

For most materials, like glass, their focal lengths generally extend away from their surface a distance less than their radius, and approach the surface as the wavelength extends into the infrarad, which means if you carry an uncovered glass sphere around on the beach or in the desert, you will burn your hand or set fire to your glove.

I learned this secondhand one day, at a beach gathering of Tolkien society geeks. One of them had taken to carrying around a 4" glass sphere she had found somewhere, calling it her "palantir." As the sun rose, she yelped and threw the thing to the ground. "It burned me!" she cried.

I had many times coupled fibers using ball lenses so I knew immediately what had happened. But I said "You know what that means, don't you? Sauron is watching you."

She wouldn't touch the thing again.

Also, speaking of ball lenses... you can use your head as a ball lens to extend the range of your car's wireless entry key fob. If you find yourself just out of range of your keys, simply put the transmitter about an inch behind your head, directly *opposite* the car. Your head is mostly transparent to the RF, but has a slightly different index of refraction from air/vaccum, thus acts as a lens. And since your head is approximately spherical, it works well enough to make a practical convergent lens.

Re:Ball Lenses are fun!

[Tacvek]

She wouldn't touch the thing again.

Also, speaking of ball lenses... you can use your head as a ball lens to extend the range of your car's wireless entry key fob. If you find yourself just out of range of your keys, simply put the transmitter about an inch behind your head, directly *opposite* the car. Your head is mostly transparent to the RF, but has a slightly different index of refraction from air/vaccum, thus acts as a lens. And since your head is approximately spherical, it works well enough to make a practical convergent lens.

Really?!! Deliberately focusing radio waves via your head!?! Are you nuts!!?

Honestly though I would have assumed that the effect described was due to one of the other many unusual characteristics of RF that I never really payed attention to. The head as a lens would never have occurred to me.

Re:Ball Lenses are fun!

[gknoy]

Well, the waves will be going through your head anyway, may as well cause them to take a path that is beneficial insofar as it gets a signal to your car better, right?

Re:Ball Lenses are fun!

[Tacvek]

In order for the waves to be going through my head, I'd need to take off my tinfoil hat (it's more of a helmet really) first, you insensitive clod. ;-)

Re:Ball Lenses are fun!

[shess]

Also, speaking of ball lenses... you can use your head as a ball lens to extend the range of your car's wireless entry key fob. If you find yourself just out of range of your keys, simply put the transmitter about an inch behind your head, directly *opposite* the car. Your head is mostly transparent to the RF, but has a slightly different index of refraction from air/vaccum, thus acts as a lens. And since your head is approximately spherical, it works well enough to make a practical convergent lens.

Odd, I've always heard it as that you hold the fob under your chin.

The moon?

[WindBourne]

Could this be useful on the moon?

Re:Not impressed

[hardtofindanick]

You missed the part where he layers sand and makes 3D objects.

Re:Not impressed

[layer3switch]

Not really sure about practicality of using sun as blow torch to fuse materials together in "Mars", but i'm pretty sure it's useful to convert heat as stored energy rather than chemical via photovoltaics. For instance, water. Mars supposedly have water. What if, high temperature/pressured water splitting using focus ray into water chamber to gain hydrogen as stored energy and oxygen to sustain life? I think, in foreign environment like Mars, you would want something "low tech" enough so that maintenance is kept at minimal and production and operational cost is low enough to make it reality. Also Mars has plenty of carbon dioxide. Instead of drinking Mars' water or your own piss (filtration is a huge problem), you can use hydrogen and carbon dioxide to make water using sabatier process. Hell, even byproduct can be used to make even more water and carbon extra by using heat which is plenty.

This Device Poses Some Interesting Questions

[LifesABeach]

What other materials could be melted for other applications?

Can the target spot be made smaller?

What type of drill(s) could be used to polish?

All in all, this is definitely a candidate for the "What's Cool for 2011" award.

or omar sharif?

[decora]

or brad dourif?

Re:Not impressed

[Telvin_3d]

Actually, many commercial 3D printers make very polished final products. In some cases these prototypes may actually be of higher quality and more durable than the final mass produced version.

The problem is that the unit price scales very poorly once you scale up from making five to test to five million to sell.

Now, it's entirely possible that given enough R&D and experiments 3D printers can be developed where the higher cost of production is more than offset by the lack of shipping and the customizability of the final product. Ten years from now our purchase decisions could very well boil down to "cheap and generic from China" or "customized and immediate from the local shop"

Re:Not impressed

[yarnosh]

The problem is that the unit price scales very poorly once you scale up from making five to test to five million to sell.

There's that, and the material used for the printer is not necessarily the one you want in your final product. And this certainly applies if your material is sand.

Ten years from now our purchase decisions could very well boil down to "cheap and generic from China" or "customized and immediate from the local shop"

A 3D printer is not a replicator, you know. You don't just plug in "iPhone" and come out with a fully functional iPhone.

Re:Not impressed

[Opportunist]

Couple it with a motion sensor and you don't even have to steer the aiming ray yourself!

Re:Not impressed

[Opportunist]

Not only that, but have you thought about how most of the poorest nations on this planet have these two resources in relative abundance? Now all we have to find is something people would want to have and they finally have some goods they could export for much needed money.

Re:Not impressed

[Telvin_3d]

A 3D printer is not a replicator, you know. You don't just plug in "iPhone" and come out with a fully functional iPhone.

A replicator? Well, for solids and structural shapes, yes they are. Right now you can print working parts (with embedded working parts) done in some of the same hard plastics (or metals) that production designs are done in. I have designed and printed such things myself.

Can you 'print' an iPhone? Not with any single machine right now. But it's far passed the point where such a thing is an impossibility and has instead moved on to an engineering challenge. How about combining an additive printer with a CNC mill and a pick-and-place machine. All three are based on similar three-axis designs. In fact, I've seen several 'hobby' machines that can be converted from printer to CNC.

So something that can print a case, including the required electrical connections. Then (or rather, simultaneously) drop in the specialist chips/battery/screen where they need to go. Use the CNC abilities for final polish and you are good to go. There is no reason that you shouldn't be able to take a working phone out of the printer and turn it on, still warm.

Such a device is not beyond what could be built now, immediately. It's simply a question of cost and demand. Even five years ago there was no realistic demand for hobbyist printers/CNC and what there was had astronomical prices. Now there is a thriving community, a bunch of home brew and several commercial companies looking seriously at entering the market at affordable prices. In five more years I'll be shocked if far more ambitions solutions are not available.

The next level...

[xlovenuggetx]

While reading the article I couldn't help but imagine the great mountains of sand in the deserts across the world. How come they don't make a machine that melts sand to create glass but then equips the glass with the necessary compenents for a solar panel? It could run off of petrol at first but then as it begins making the panels it could string them behind it as it moves to pick up more sand for the next one and eventually it will be running exclusively off of the solar panels. Just an idea. is this possible with current tech?

skynet anyone?

[Finite9]

OMFG, see the links!!

2011 - 3D printer prints glass from sand

2011 - robot innovations include self-balancing androids (video on youtube guy trying to push over bot, and it reacts to keep balance), drones, life-like androids (Danish man). etc etc

2020 - 3D printer prints most stuff, commercial applications. Self-balancing androids that look life like begin appearing in hospitals

2030 - 3D printers print anything. Androids look like us. Commercial fabrication plants print autonomously, one in particular owned by the military, daughter company called ... Skynet!!!!

Shiiit. I'll soon be a pensioner by 2030, and my chances of doing a Skynet survival course will be nill. Oh well, time to start trainging the boy at least so he can wander the wastes as a nomad for his remainging years.

Re:de-desertification

[xclr8r]

Depends on the desert. Something out of Arizona, Nevada, Baja sure lots of life. When you are talking sand dunes not nearly as much.

Sand and mechanics - such a great combination

[FishOuttaWater]

Gonna be so nasty when the sand works its way into those gears...