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Laser Kaleidoscope

Laser Kaleidoscope

We managed to get Milwaukee Makerspace invited to another gallery night, and this time we’re taking part in Bay View Gallery Night at Alterra, so I figured I needed a new project. And hey, what’s better than a deadline to get a project done? (It’s like college all over again… in a good way!)

Interociter

When I was at Maker Faire Detroit back in July I saw this laser spinner thingy called “The Interociter” and decided I had to have one. And by “have one” I mean “make one”… so I did.

(There’s some debate over whether it should be called a “Laser Kaleidoscope” or “Laser Spirograph” or “Laser Spinner Thingy” and while I do like “Laser Spinner Thingy” I also get sick of people thinking all my projects are Spirograph-inspired, so I went with Laser Kaleidoscope. Deal with it.)

Laser Kaleidoscope

Laser Kaleidoscope

So where were we? Oh yes, the project! It’s really simple: a laser is pointed at a mirror, and that reflects the laser onto another mirror, and that one reflects it onto another mirror, and then it shows up on the wall. You can make the motors spin by turning them on with a pushbutton, and then adjust the speed by turning the knobs. There are 3 motors (an earlier prototype had 4) and by setting them all to different speeds, you can get some crazy patterns going.

So how does it work? The laser hits the first spinning mirror, and creates what appears to be a circle. It’s really a single dot, but it’s spinning around so fast it looks like a circle. Add a second (and third) mirror, and since they all wobble just a little bit, you get much more than a simple circle.

Here’s a shopping list:

I say “shopping list” because those are the parts I (mostly) bought… Of these parts I’ll note that with the laser I leaned towards the “safe” side, but it can be difficult to see in well-lit rooms, so I may upgrade to this one at some point. The round craft mirrors came in a variety pack with different sizes. I may experiment with larger mirrors in the future.

Laser Kaleidoscope

Laser Kaleidoscope

There are a bunch more parts involved, one being the piece of wood everything is attached to, and the other parts were all designed and 3D printed by me. (OK, I had a little help with the knobs.)

The printed parts are:

  • (1) Laser mount
  • (3) Motor mounts
  • (3) Mirror mounts
  • (3) Knobs

(I also considered printing some small U-shaped things to hold the wires in place, but haven’t bothered with that yet.)

And yeah, this is why I have a 3D printer. The ability to digitally design something, rapidly create it, tweak it a bit and print a new one… that’s what I love.

My original plan was to make up a nice laser-cut case for this (I thought that would be appropriate) but with the lasers down for repair, I didn’t get that done in time. That’s actually fine, as I’ll probably end up redesigning things a bit before I’m totally done with it. So far though, I’m happy with the progress.

The video was quick & dirty, and really doesn’t do it justice, which is why you’ll need to come see it in person I guess. I figured I couldn’t write this post without including some sort of proof that it actually works. :)

Lasers! They’re awesome!

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Instructables + Laser = ????

VOTE!

So here’s the deal friends… Ben Nelson, fellow maker, DIY enthusiast, and Milwaukee Makerspace member, has won his fair share of contests over at Instructables, and it’s prompted me to give it a try as well, so I present to you my first Instructable: Creating Random Art for Puzzles.

And I’ll be totally honest, the main reason for me publishing it was to enter this contest to win a laser cutter from Hurricane Lasers. (I have no shame in telling you that!)

Ever since the Makerspace got a laser cutter, I’ve fallen in love, and it’s become my favorite tool, possibly even surpassing the RepRap. (Shhh, don’t tell the RepRaster 5000 that!) You’ve probably seen a few of my posts about things I’ve laser cut. Of course lately the laser cutter seem to break down every other week, so getting time to go to the space when it’s working is tough. Luckily, my friends at Lovesick Robot Studios helped me out with this project.

Laser-cut puzzle coasters

When I started on this project, I wasn’t even sure where it would go, but I wanted to explore the concept of introducing random elements into my art and see where it would take me. Well… this is the first stop: puzzles created with random art.

Puzzle: Solved!

Of course if you know me, you know I also love making coasters… so I made puzzle coasters with random art in addition to a normal puzzle. (The “normal” puzzle was made with a printer, some board, and an X-ACTO knife. All the details are in the Instructable.)

Puzzle? Coasters? Both!

So here’s the deal friends… I’d really appreciate if you vote for me in the contest, because if I win, I’ll get my own laser cutter… but rest assured, I won’t just keep it to myself. If you need something etched or cut, well, I may be able to help you out. I mean, if I win this contest. So yeah, I’d appreciate your vote.

So go to the page to vote. See the image at the top of this post which shows where the “VOTE” button is.) Also, since I took my sweet time, we’ve only got two days…. Voting ends the 20th, so don’t put it off… vote now! Don’t see the vote button? Make sure you log in. Don’t have an account? Create one!

Thanks!

Update: As of 2012-09-28 I have not been chosen as a finalist. Oh well.

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Fixing the Fixture

Adapter

I (somewhat) jokingly posted something the other day about how my wife asked me to 3D print something, and was totally serious this time and not sarcastic about it. To be fair, she’s heard me say “I’ll just 3D print one!” about 100 times this summer, and was probably sick of it, but when you live in the future, it’s pretty damn exciting.

Or story begins back in 2009 when we moved into our current house. The light above the front door was just a bare bulb, with nothing around it. I’m assuming there was a glass ball at one point, and it must have broke, or been stolen, or dematerialized. No matter, we can fix it.

3D Printed Part

While at Home Depot the wife found a cheapie plastic majigger that would fit over the light bulb, so we bought it. This is also when she suggested I could “make it work” and thus, I agreed.

I ended up using OpenSCAD to design a simple ring that would press-fit the new piece, and have the needed holes to fix the fixture… and adapter, if you will.

It fits!

It worked! As you may notice, there are no mounting holes. I often don’t bother making holes in the objects I print because I’ve got a drill press, and it makes much more precise holes than the RepRaster 5000 can. (And just to be clear, the clear piece is not what I printed. I printed the black piece. Got it?)

Holes for screws

Here’s the piece after I drilled the holes and secure it into the fixture with two small bolts. Sadly the small bolts are a little long, and stick out the top, but hey, it’s still an improvement.

Fixed!

So now on the front of the house is this lovely cheapie plastic majigger instead of just a bare light bulb. Home Improvements FTW!

This is one more thing where I really don’t know how I could have done this as elegantly without a 3D printer. Using open source software I designed the needed adapter and then printed it out using open source hardware, and the total cost of materials (ABS plastic) was probably less than 50 cents. As I said… living in the future and all that.

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Stipple the Hoan

StippleGen2 from our friends at Evil Mad Scientist Laboratories is a great little application for creating line art from graphic images. The docs on their wiki will give you a good overview of what it does.

When I first got my Egg-Bot I used an application called “Voronoi Stippler” to play around with stippling, but sadly the code for the application was taken offline. StippleGen2 takes the place of Voronoi Stippler quite well!

Hoan Bridge Graphic
Original Hoan Bridge Graphic

I started out with this graphic of the Hoan Bridge, a Milwaukee Landmark, and converted the small color image to a larger grayscale image. (Why the Hoan Bridge? Because someone on Facebook suggested it!)

Hoan TSP
TSP Artwork

Here is the result of generating the TSP art. What is TSP you ask? Basically, it’s a path with a single line. It’s great for generating toolpaths used by things like CNC machines, engravers, routers, lasers, etc. (Find out more about TSP!)

Hoan Stipples
Stipple Artwork

I wasn’t convinced the TSP art would come out great, so I went to the circular stipples. Here’s the final version, which is incredibly hard to see rendered properly at this size, so look below for some zoomed in versions.

Hoan Stipples Zoomed
Stipple Artwork Zoomed In

Hoan Stipples Zoomed More
Stipple Artwork Zoomed In More

Hoan Stipples Zoomed Even More
Stipple Artwork Zoomed In Even More!

As you can see, the circles overlap, which means if we were to etch this with a laser, and use the vector setting (as opposed to raster) it would see each circle as a distinct object, and etch each one. (Etching as raster would most likely just etch it all as one single blob, no individual circles.)

So because each circle will be etched individually, and they overlap, we’ll end up with different heights/layers, as it were, due to some areas of our material being hit with the laser more than once. In other words… texture!

Laser-eched Hoan
Final Laser-etched piece

Here’s our final piece of laser-etched Baltic Birch plywood. Below you can see some zoomed in shots showing the surface. Notice how the circles are so small they essentially looks like dots. (You can click each photo to see the large version on Flickr.)

Laser-eched Hoan
Close-up of stipples

Laser-eched Hoan
Texture in upper-right corner

Laser-eched Hoan
Texture in the letter “N”

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3rD Times The Charm!

Three Motor Holders

While I usually describe 3D printing to people with something like “you can make beautiful things that are art, or functional things like parts” I’ve been printing a lot of parts lately (thought I still print pretty things!)

The parts I’m printing are of my design, for things I am building, and they often have to fit existing real-world objects. The process usually involves measure thing with calipers to get dimensions, and then designing things in 3D software. (I’m leaning more towards OpenSCAD latley, as opposed to Sketchup.)

If you’re just downloading and printing objects from Thingverse, they’ll (hopefully) work on the first try, but if you’re doing everything on your own, it may take a few tries.

I wanted to print a small motor mount for this DC motor that Adafruit sells. So I got out the calipers and went to work.

Motor in the second holder

For the first attempt (see top photo) I completely screwed up by using the inside dimensions (where the motor should fit) as the outside dimensions. Stupid mistake! On my second attempt I got it right, and the motor fit almost perfectly.

Motor in third holder

On the third iteration I made minor adjustments to the outer walls, and I also added an “air hole” on the top. The motor has two slots in the body which I assume draw air into it to prevent overheating. (You can see I know very little about motor design right now.)

Motor and holder

Back in June when the guys from MakerBot stopped by Milwaukee Makerspace, I talked to Skimbal, and asked how many revisions he went through when designing things, and he said about two or three. I was impressed by this because last year I tried designing a real-word replacement part and I think I made about ten versions of it. Of course part of this was my lack of 3D skills, and part of it may have been issues with the old CupCake I was using.

Motor in the holder

So I’m pretty happy with the fact that I can get a good version of a part in just a few tries now. (Though I should admit that I’m not happy with the slots for the screws, and may end up tweaking things a bit more, which is pretty darn easy in OpenSCAD.)

When I was talking to someone about 3D printers this summer, they didn’t see the point of having one at home when there were so many companies that allowed you to upload a design and would print it and ship it to you. Here’s where a home 3D printer shines; I can measure a part, get a prototype printed, test it, and print another version all in a single afternoon. Now that’s rapid prototyping!

And a mirror holder!

Oh yeah, I also printed a mirror holder. It took just two revisions to get one that worked well.