Incredible 3D Printing With Sunlight and Sand

We’ve shown you the power of the sun before, and here’s another superb example. This 3D printing project demonstrates what you can do in the desert with just two materials: sand and sun. In the demo above, sunlight and sand are used to build up a design layer by layer to create glass objects using a 3D printing process.

The Sun-Printer is a solar-powered, semi-automated, low-tech printer that runs on solar power and directly channels its rays through a glass lens to build 3D objects using a cam-guided system. The experiment uses silica sand which, at high temperatures, turns into glass. Check out full details on the 3D printing experiment.