check out this Rapid Prototyping (RP) process, is this a sustainable RP process for the future?
the process very cleverly uses sand, one of the most abundant materials on the planet and our giant renewable energy source the sun.
we ask ourselves...
- could it ever be a viable RP process, how much improvement can be made to the geometric tolerance of the finished article?
- is it just an increase in the sun's rays or is it the instability of the material itself?
- could the sand be granulated further to create a fine powder to increase the geometric tolerancing, could it ever take on the form of a 3d printer where the sand is heated up in a chamber before being printed in layers onto the board?
- what is it currently suitable for, where the geometric tolerances don't need to be as tight as an RP but as a manufacturing process for post machined parts, sculptures/street furniture etc...
- could this technology ever reach the stage where we have a solar panel on our roofs feeding an RP machine in the office?
.
Markus Kayser - Solar Sinter Project from Markus Kayser on Vimeo.
.
What are your thoughts?
.
written by Rhys Evans ts2011
Subscribe to RSS
Solar Sinter
This is a very interesting technology... I would be interested to know the time frame in which the parts shown in the video were created. Is this truly a rapid prototyping technique, or simply a prototyping technique? It may be a viable means of creating parts, but they may take days to build. I can certainly see that this process would be very useful for one-off and batch production of parts that do not require tight tolerances.