Markus Kayser - Solar Sinter Project
Why Hacker News recommends it
HN references it as prior art whenever solar sintering, sand printing or sunlight-based manufacturing comes up.
What it is
Markus Kayser's Solar Sinter project video shows a machine in the desert using sunlight and sand to 3D print glass objects. It is a short demonstration of desert manufacturing from renewable energy and local material.
Recommended by 0 HN commenters across 0 different months, 2017 to 2025.
What Hacker News said
Cites mmjaa · 2017-11 · on “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?
Cites avmich · 2020-08 · on “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.
Cites qikInNdOutReply · 2022-10 · on “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 i
Cites Log_out_ · 2024-08 · on “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.
Cites mitthrowaway2 · 2025-08 · on “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]