Talk:Materials/Appropriate Machines

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About the Merge

The Materials/Appropriate Machines page is a rather generic overview of what is used for what and why, the suggested page for merging is a highly specific design discussion on the MetalicaRap, merging would imo be completely useless and counterproductive. Dreamer 13:24, 24 June 2012 (UTC)


Sintering with Sunlight

Okay, assuming that you want to be able to print your own circuit boards, and such, then you have to be able to handle temperatures up to 900 C (aluminum), 1500 C (copper), and so on. You apply the aluminum to a plastic substrate, and you're going to have a gooey mess. No good. So in that case, you need to be able to work a substrate that is higher temperature than the items applied to it. So you need to be able to handle ceramics. To do this, you need sintering, which also incidentally is going to help you handle the metals and such.

Now, eventually, you might have laser sintering. So be it. But there is another way of doing it: Focus the light, possibly the sunlight. Make a big lens, and operate in a relative vacuum. Apply powder to the surface, sinter it, apply powder, sinter, and so on. You have to be able to make geared mirrors, and you might need to be able to make fiber optics. All of these are replicatable, once you have sintering capability.

Just a thought. MickLinux 22:39, 3 January 2013 (UTC)MJR