Wow. Even in its raw state the art is beautiful. Surely has industrial potential. Someone in the UK invents something and then we loose it. I hope not. Should be called the Royal college of commercial arts

now I can make the ultimate sand castle!

Can you build a house like this?

@Justin, My thoughts exactly!

I do not know what the initial cost would be, but this looks like a game changer for poor communities in Africa. Imagine a community pools its money to buy one of these. They then produce many of the things they need for free from local sand. Bricks for houses (maybe shaped so they fit together like leggos or something so you do not need mortar), household implements like pottery, maybe even furniture, some tools like light gardening tools (if the glass is not too brittle). Each person could pay a small amount for the products to pay back for the machine. It would make a great cottage industry.

Kayser's idea is actually pretty old. For instance, Martin Caidin released "High Crystal," his third Steve Austin novel, back in 1974. The plot had a concentrated solar power furnace built by an ancient civilization inside a pyramid.

Now if we can just make the items GLASSY and smooth.... and perhaps with the FINE detail aspect - this could be very useful....

The industrial grinding stone effect, however, is quite charming too.

I think it'd be FASTER to make bowls and stuff out of CLAY then kiln fire them. I'd say that bowl took quite a few hours to produce judging by the real-time speed of the thing, but it sure does have potential!

Realizing that a tool that is hot enough to melt sand is hot enough for a lot of other things, this is pretty amazing.

If it can melt sand it can melt steel and many other metals. Put some thinking on that for this device.

Guys, it can't melt sand. It can get sand hot enough to be sintered, but the grains are still intact. Just the outermost layer of each grain gets hot enough to stick to its neighbors, hence the rough look. With the air in the sand acting as an insulator, it would take a considerably larger solar collector to gather enough sunlight to actually create molten silica. Not to mention he's heating a very small bit of sand at a time before moving the focus. Think of the old childhood practice of using a magnifying glass to set items on fire. You had to focus the sunlight onto a very small spot or it didn't work.

@Leithauser: great thots! Take this concept and simplify it by losing the computer/cnc/digital parts and employ a reflector-type concentrator. Make the gantry follow a predefined path to trace, for example, the outline of a brick-sized rectangle. Voila! A viable micro-business that allows locals in Saharan and sub-saharan countries to manufacture their own building materials, as well as for possible export. I would think cinder-blocks made in this way would be ideal building material - durable, and when filled with something (like sand?) would be fairly well insulated, I'd think.

Another possiblity: if the shapes created are water-tight, then jars & cisterns could be made - very advantageous in those regions. Cool stuff, regardless...

How about sticking the sand grains together with resin? A heck of a lot easier. The resin could be applied as in ink jet 3D printing. In the video, I was amused by the guy dragging the equipment in front of the camera, rather than moving the camera. I think it is one of the worst filmed videos I have ever seen. What an enormous effort to make the machine and then cart it to the Sahara! Surely it would work anywhere. Sand is available, apart from in the desert.

This would be a perfect crowd pleaser at Burning Man.

Let us take this process a step further..

If the end product of this sintering process can create a deivce that

is solid and can withstand low pressure densities.

why not computerize control the machinery and send it to the moon.

There an automated machine could create structures capable of being presurized

and used as buildings for humans to reside and work,etc.

And... if it can be done on the moon why not on Mars.

The place could be prepared well before exploration crews will get there,

without having to ship materials from here to that location. Something

not economically freasible now.

NASA needs to know about this process..

Ken D.Sr.

There's a Second Life project to model a solar sinter unit that's big enough to cook moon dust into roads, building materials and even bearings. Making a house in the desert should now be easy. With the unit displayed in the video you could sinter bricks, tiles, short quarts beams, and containers. It would be slow but you cold build buildings and walled oasis gardens. There are places where wind blown sand overwhelms villages a bank of these solar sinter units could turn the sand into stone as it comes creating tons of building materials. Cement and the water for it is too hard to get in a desert so this is much cheaper.

Aren't there larger versions of this approach operating as Solar forges in the Arizona desert? I seem to remember reading about this on Gizmag a year or two ago. Great bowl though eh? I'd buy one. Also interested the idea of a 'suntracker' that runs on some PV panels. Nice. Clever guy.

About using this for shelter on the moon. There are apparently miles of huge underground lava tubes under the surface of the moon that would be ideal for shelter. We could have a moonbase quickly if we didn't insist on "bringing our own."