Solar-powered RepRap Prints Even When The Power Is Out

solar_powered_3d_printer_reprap

[Mark] wrote in to share a little creation that he is calling the first solar-powered 3D printer in existence. While we can’t say that we totally agree with him on that title, we will give him the benefit of the doubt that this is the first solar-powered RepRap we have seen thus far.

You might remember [Mark] from his previous exploits, but rest assured that there’s little possibility of anyone losing an eye with this one. He has taken his RepRap outdoors, and with the help of a solar panel plus a few batteries from Harbor Freight, he has the world’s first solar-powered RepRap*.

The trick behind keeping the RepRap running for such a long time with the sun as its only power source lies in the RAMPS board [Mark] uses. He has the 1.3 revision of the shield, which enables him to print objects loaded from an SD card rather than requiring a computer to be connected at all times.

So, if you happen to need the ability to print 3D objects where an extension cord cannot possibly reach, check out [Mark’s] setup and get to building!

* Maybe. Perhaps.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zzo-M5c_73Y&w=470]

24 thoughts on “Solar-powered RepRap Prints Even When The Power Is Out

    1. I don’t deny that’s it’s far out , but comparing apples to oranges. So you posted a duplicate link but that shouldn’t be any hair off anyone’s whatever. I see I was guilty of irregular capitalization in a remark, “they’ll” get over it.

  1. My only question is “why?”. I can’t imagine many scenarios : “quick, the grid power died, print out that thing you’ve previously converted to gcode and saved to an SD card, that will save us”…
    “Oh dear, it took too long to print, got dark and now we need to wait till morning to try again.”
    It’s not even particularly portable looking.

    1. Why would anyone reading this blog ask, why anyone do anything that’s posted here? ;) Asking the obvious question. Perhaps he had the panels, and batteries anyway, along with the printer, and said I’ll do this, just for the hell of it. And having a video camera he recorded a video for the same reason.

  2. So now “SOLAR POWER” it like internet…

    Doing something that everyone else is doing but “SOLAR POWERED” makes it special?

    Any fool can take a makerbot and buy $2100 in solar panels and a inverter and make a solar powered reprap.

  3. Ahh take that back. It’s $199 in Harbor Freight solar panels. and it’s NOT running off them.

    That’s a 45 Watt panel kit. it has ZERO chance of running a reprap. The solar panels are there for show.

  4. Yea there’s always going to be some problem with declaring something to be first. Most often with Semantics. However it looks to me that Mark’s first solar power printer can more easily be transported the location of Markus’ location, and print something more so that Markus’ printer can be transported to Mark’s location, and print something. With out dumping truckloads of sand on the nice grass anyway. To keep things entire equal the sand should be transported from the Sahara. Not to belittle Marks efforts, most if use could have solar powered a 3D printer if asked. I I’m sure most of us if ask to solar power a Sand Sintering Printer would have a WTH? reaction.

      1. Shees; give them a break. A google search for [solar powered reprap] doesn’t produce hint that the reprap factory uses solar power. For what we pay hackaday exactly how much time do you feel hackaday should spend sorting out 106K search results, and coming up with, chasing down other hunches?

      2. @NOLKK

        I don’t mean research by HAD I mean research by the guy trumpeting the fact that he has “The first 3d solar powered rapid prototype machine.”

        Before you go out and make such a bold claim you should check to see if it is true.

      3. The HAD staff or anyone else, the point is still the same, how much time do you devote to research under overwhelming information overload when there is no assurance that the information you seek exists at all? [shrug]

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