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Making things by sunlight.
Computers are now making products one particle at a time. Inside a machine that costs as much as a house, a laser beam fuses metal or ceramic powder to build up a finished product layer by layer.Yet the laser optical power used is less than that of the sunlight that streams through a kitchen window, and the electromechanics are essentially the same as in an ordinary printer.
The field of making things by sunlight is ready for its first explorers. Hopefully this page will aid in their cosmic undertaking---the first time, other than by wind and rain, that the sun has shaped the earth.
As far as we know, no one has yet built a selective solar sinterer—homebrew or otherwise. If you know better, please send a photo.
SELECTIVE SOLAR SINTERING
Using Fabricators to Reduce Space Transportation Costs - McKay, Davis and BurnsSolar Furnaces
Large solar furnaces
CNRS Odeillo
NREL High-Flux Solar Furnace
Paul Scherrer Institut
Homebrew solar furnaces
William Beaty
A. Jones
Noel Adamson
Secondary concentrators
University of Chicago - nonimaging optics
NASA's refractive secondary solar concentrator
Equatorial mount heliostats
Sommers-Bausch Observatory
Sintering of lunar soil
NASA's Advanced Automation for Space Missions
Experiments on lunar soil simulants
Mining near-earth asteroids
Potential suppliers
Lenses
Edmund Scientific
American Science & Surplus
Sinterable materials
Craft House (dyed granulated wax)
PERSONAL FACTORIES
The Personal Factory - Hinzmann
The Household Fabricator - Burns
Automated Fabrication - Burns
The Freedom to Create - Burns
Guru's Lair: Santa Claus machine
RELATED TECHNOLOGIES
Selective laser sinteringManufacturers
DTM Corporation
EOS GmbH
Laser sintering science
U.T. Laboratory for Freeform Fabrication
Material Issues in Layered Forming - Amon et al.
Patents
Carl Deckard's original patent
DTM's powder delivery system
EOS's zoned radiation technique
Reference shelf
Solid Freeform Fabrication - Beaman et al.
Rapid prototyping links
Ennex Corporation
Rapid News