3D PRINTING SOLAR PANELS MADE POSSIBLE

Written by: Chaotic Indian

Open Source technology has really advanced in the past few years. More and more people are becoming increasingly aware of the open-source movement and thus, we have more and more creative ideas appearing. The latest such idea comes from Shawn Freyne and Alex Hornstein from the Philippines, who have come up with a method to print solar panels every 15 seconds.

The “Open Source Solar Factory”, developed by the duo, is a kit small enough to fit on a desktop and is efficient enough to produce 300 thousand solar panels a year, which roughly translates to one panel every 15 seconds. Most of the m materials used is simple – glue, silicon cells, glass and plastic.We can see that this method can drastically reduce the price of solar cells. With enough time and effort, there may be enough panels to power major

items like cars, houses, etc. Since the project is DIY, the developers have managed to reduce

total cost by nearly 50%, seeing as there is no intensive labor involved.

The 2 scientists involved have a strong passion for inventing and the idea of clean,free energy everywhere. They wanted to make the project as economical as possible. They have even put up a tutorial on Instructables.com for the kit, so that other people might be able to make such kits of their own. 

 Above – the Solar Factory kit in action.

At the moment, the duo have completed an entire round of successful funding on Kickstarter, a major crowd-funding site. They have raised $70,000 and are now aiming to raise $100,000 for their continued research on the topic.