3 ms·
Making holograms with a pen plotter
- dejobaan 2mo agoThis is "old Internet" style fun territory (along the same lines as the Tom7 fun, if not quite as deep). I felt that the olive oil + fingerprint + phone screen was a really nice way to illustrate the core concept. Especially clever because it used something common and annoying to help describe how the plotter does its thing.
- TacticalCoder 2mo agoThere are very few TFAs I upvotes before opening TFA. But with such a title, this is one of them...
- radarsat1 2mo agoBefore getting further into the article I thought maybe he was going to show how to use the plotter to control the oil smearing technique, which honestly would have been kind of cool.
- j6m8 2mo agoauthor here — the second I did that, I considered handing it to the robot. but ... robot with oil in my living room... I decided against it :)
- j6m8 2mo agothank you so much for the kind words!!
- nomel 2mo agoRelated, "abrasion holography", with great good success for being hand drawn: http://amasci.com/amateur/holo1.html http://amasci.com/amateur/holo1.html (1995) Maybe could swap out the pen for a needle?
- asalahli 2mo agoSteve Mould has a great video on youtube explaining how they work https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sv-38lwV6vc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sv-38lwV6vc
- fredley 2mo agoThe 3Blue1Brown video on holograms is fantastic: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EmKQsSDlaa4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EmKQsSDlaa4
- femto 2mo agoIt would be interesting to augment the plotter with a Unimorph piezoelectric disk scanner [1], to enable finer movement so lines can be drawn closer together. [1] https://john-alexander42.github.io/simple-stm-web-page/Disk_Scanner_Exp.htm https://john-alexander42.github.io/simple-stm-web-page/Disk_...
- j6m8 2mo agointeresting! the axidraw v3 that I used for this (https://shop.evilmadscientist.com/productsmenu/846 https://shop.evilmadscientist.com/productsmenu/846) has a 0.0125mm stepper resolution, which means that it is pretty close to not-worth-it to go any finer since the sizes of the scratches are already many microns wide. But certainly with better etching technology that would be a super cool update!
- femto 2mo agoThe disk is part of a larger Scanning Tunneling Microscope project. https://john-alexander42.github.io/simple-stm-web-page/Project.htm https://john-alexander42.github.io/simple-stm-web-page/Proje... Alexander's results show a movement range of 1.25um, 10 times smaller than the 12.5um step of your system, so in its current form it wouldn't be suitable for interpolating motor steps. Also potentially interesting is Alexander's "cut-and-pull" technique for making scanning tips with a single atom at the point. I can't find the original reference, but here's a description: https://www.nanophys.kth.se/nanolab/afm/icon/bruker-help/Content/Probe%20and%20Sample%20Guide/STM%20Probes/Wire_cutters_STM_tips.htm https://www.nanophys.kth.se/nanolab/afm/icon/bruker-help/Con... The single atom would likely immediately wear down if used for scribing, but even if it wore down to multiple atoms wide it might still produce a very narrow line? I wonder what the effects of using an STM on a photosensitive plate would be, whether the strong electric field at the tip would lead to very narrow photographic lines?
- IshKebab 2mo agoI've made these scratch holograms before with a compass. They're pretty fun, but very far from "real" holograms.
- bacon_waffle 2mo agoChocolate is a good medium for holograms :)
- 6510 2mo agoWilliam Beaty had a video of the hands on the car hood. They showed up very detailed some 20 cm under the hood as if people captured inside. Quite the find.
- auscad 2mo agoHolography is such a beautiful and fascinating gateway to physics, and it’s so rare to see true demonstrations of it. Sadly, most people have no idea what it is because of how carelessly the term is thrown around, just like in this article. At least the author admits it and provides some kind of excuse, even if it’s at the end.
- mewens 2mo ago[flagged]
- stenl 2mo agoRelated: ”Self Reflected” by neuroscientist and artist Gregg Dunn, https://www.sothebys.com/en/articles/self-reflected-a-giant-dynamic-23k-gold-microetching-depicting-neural-activity-in-the-human-brain https://www.sothebys.com/en/articles/self-reflected-a-giant-... He uses the third dimension to encode time, so that you get an image of the brain that illustrates how signals propagate dynamically between brain regions. I have a version of this on my wall and its mesmerizing to look at with the right lighting conditions
- srean 2mo agoBeautiful. This needs to be an HN post on its own. Please post. I will upvote.
- stenl 2mo agoDone, enjoy! I posted links to his web site instead of Sotheby’s. Even though his web site is a little broken, it had much more detail on the technical process, which I think HN will appreciate. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49298723 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49298723
- srean 2mo agoIt seems to have sunk. Sadly the window of opportunity is pretty small on HN.
- j6m8 2mo agoomg that rocks