The industrial designer and also thinker Markus Kayser came with a fantastic idea of using solar power and sand to develop two kinds of incredible devices, a cutter and a printer.
Sun Cutter is a low tech light cutter device uses a large ball lens to focus the solar power onto a surface that’s moved by a cam-guided system. As the surface moves under the magnified solar light it cuts 2D components like a laser. Kayser used thin plywood to create pretty sweet shades when the project was tested for the first time in August 2010 in the Egyptian desert.
As most of three dimensional printers use resins and laser, now the artist Markus built and experimented solar power in a device called Solar Sinter. He prints with sand on the glass objects in some of the world’s harshest climates. According to Kayser: „By using the sun’s rays instead of a laser and sand instead of resins, I had the basis of an entirely new solar-powered machine and production process for making glass objects that taps into the abundant supplies of sun and sand to be found in the deserts of the world.”
The big lenses concentrate enough heat from solar power to fuse the sand into glass; the photovoltaic panels run the electronics and the tracking motor.
„This process of converting a powdery substance via a heating process into a solid form is known as sintering and has in recent years become a central process in design prototyping known as 3D printing or Selective Laser Sintering. These 3D printers use laser technology to create very precise 3D objects from a variety of powdered plastics, resins and metals – the objects being the exact physical counterparts of the computer-drawn 3D designs inputted by the designer” Kayser added.
He concludes: „The machine and the results of these first experiments presented here represent the initial significant steps towards what I envisage as a new solar-powered production tool of great potential.”
When understand the mechanics and science and solar power at work in Kayser’s devices, you’ll see the magic of its devices.
