Today I would like to introduce a (very literal) sand sculpture printer. It's not really cutting-edge technology, it's a work of art, but it's kind of interesting.

Let's take a look at the video first:

this 3D printer uses sunlight to create literal 3D sand sculptures (Hello). Of course, it is not accurate to call it sand sculpture. Generally, sand sculpture refers to the sculpture made of wet sand with water on the beach, but here the sand is melted locally by high temperature, and the molten sand sticks to the surrounding sand, thus forming 3D printed objects.

this thing is a work created by artist, inventor and designer Markus Kayser2011, called "Solar Sinter" (Solar Sintering). The design idea is very simple: use a lens to focus intense sunlight in the desert to reach a high temperature at a point, and then use this high temperature to melt sand everywhere in the desert. Moving a plate filled with sand can be sintered into a flat shape, and then burned one layer and then covered with a new layer of sand can eventually be sintered into a three-dimensional shape.

at first, he just wanted to do something to make use of sunlight, so he first made a lens-focused "solar cutter" (imagine a laser cutter, and the laser was replaced by focused sunlight). But then I thought that I had gone to the desert to take advantage of the sun, so why not bring some plywood to cut it? let's just process the sand on the spot. So this solar sintering machine was born.

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rather than practical value, the author actually regards it as a discussion on the future utilization of energy and resources. I hope to arouse everyone's thinking with the act of making things using "free energy" and "free resources". The sand bowl he made with the solar-powered sintering machine should be on display at MoMA, the Museum of Modern Art in New York.

focusing on sunlight to burn sand is currently just an artistic creation, but the inspiration for Kayser should indeed be a practical technology in reality. There is a method of 3D printing metal parts that is in principle exactly the same as the sintered sand we saw above, except that it requires layers of metal powder sintered by laser in a cabin filled with inert gas (pictured below).

more reading: dynamic picture appreciation: laser "printing" metal parts

more about sand sculpture printers can be found here at → https://kayserworks.com/#/798817030644/

. You can also find this person's TED speech on the Internet (but I don't think he is really good at speaking. )