Tag Archives: Mirror

This Vapour Deposition Chamber Isn’t Vapourware

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If you are an astronomer with an optical reflecting telescope, the quality of your mirror is one of your most significant concerns. Large observatories will therefore often have on-site vapour deposition plants to revitalise their reflectors by depositing a fresh layer of aluminium upon them. You might think that such a device would be the preserve only of such well-funded sites, but perhaps [Michael Koch]’s work will prove you wrong. He’s created his own vapour deposition system (Google Translate link of the German original) from scratch, and while it might be smaller than the institutional equivalents it is no less …read more

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Clever Approach to Stylus Alignment

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Digitally stored music is just data. But not long ago, music was analog and required machines with moving parts. If you have never owned a record player, you at least know what they look like, now that there’s a(nother) vinyl revival. What you may not be aware of is that the player’s stylus needs to be aligned. It makes sense, that hypersensitive needle can’t be expected to perform well if it’s tearing across a record like a drift racer.

There are professional tools for ensuring alignment, but it’s not something you’ll need each day. [Ali Naci Erdem] shows us his …read more

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Flowing Light Art Inspired By Plankton

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With today’s technology, art can be taken in directions that have never before been possible. Taking advantage of this, [teamlab] — an art collective from Japan — have unveiled an art installation that integrates the attendee into the spectacle. In the dark room of the piece ‘Moving Creates Vortices and Vortices Create Movement,‘ you are the brush that paints the flowing display.

Inspired by the movement of ocean plankton, this borrows your movement to create tapestries of light with mirrored walls to aggrandize the effect. As attendees walk about the room, their movements are tracked and translated into flowing patterns …read more

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Poor Man’s Laser Scanner Probably Won’t Shoot Your Eye Out, Kid

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Yes, laser cutters that come off the slow boat from China are more affordable than ever, and with some tweaks and hacks they can turn out some decent results. But if you just want a laser lightshow that’ll draw boxes on your living room ceiling, this simple X-Y laser scanner might be a good platform to build.

Let’s say right up front that there are more than a few safety issues with [ThingEngineer]’s 3D-printed two-axis scanner. He’s well aware of these potential retina-cooking issues and duly notes that a good pair of laser safety goggles is a must and that …read more

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A Giant Magellan Telescope Needs Giant Mirrors

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The Giant Magellan Telescope doesn’t seem so giant in the renderings, until you see how the mirrors are made.

The telescope will require seven total mirrors each 27 feet (8.4 meters) in diameter for a total combined diameter of 24.5 meters. Half of an Olympic size pool’s length. A little over four times the diameter of the James Webb Space Telescope.

According to the website, the mirrors are cast at the University of Arizona mirror lab and take four years each to make. They’re made from blocks of Japanese glass laid out in a giant oven. The whole process of …read more

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Star Wars Speeder’s Finishing Touch: Mirrors

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[Super 73] make electric scooters, and they made some Star Wars Speeder Bikes with a twist for Halloween; adding some mirrored panels around the bottoms of the bikes made for a decent visual effect that requires no upkeep or fancy workings. Having amazed everyone with the bikes, they followed them up with a video of the build process.

The speeders are shells built around their Super 73 electric scooter, with bases of what looks like MDF sitting on anchor points. Onto the base platforms goes cardboard and expanding foam to create the correct shapes, which are then sanded then coated …read more

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Boredom + Lasers = Projector!

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[Krazer], a post-doctoral researcher at MIT, loves him some lasers. When out of boredom one afternoon he hatched an idea for a laser projector, it grew until a few years later he wound up with this RGB laser for a projector — Mark IV no less.

In addition to 3D-printing the parts, the major innovation with this version is the ability to re-align the lasers as needed; tweaking the vertical alignment is controlled by a screw on the laser mounts while the horizontal alignment is done the same way on the mirror mounts. This simplifies the design and reduces the …read more

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A Table From Beyond Infinity

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Infinity mirrors are some far-out table mods and make a great centerpiece. Instructables user [bongoboy23] took a couple steps beyond infinity when designing this incredible table tailor-made for our modern age.

Poplar and pine wood make up the framing, and red oak — stained and engraved — make for a chic exterior. Programmed with Arduino and run on a Teensy 3.1, the tabletop has 960 LEDs in forty sections. There are, four USB ports hidden behind sliding panels, as well as a two-port AC outlet and an inductive charging pad and circuit.  A hidden Adafruit TFT touchscreen display allows the …read more

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Shapes Made From Light, Smoke, and A Lot of Mirrors

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Part lightshow, part art piece, part exploratory technology, Light Barrier (third edition) by South Korean duo [Kimchi and Chips] crafts a visual and aural experience of ephemeral light structures using projectors, mirrors, and a light fog.

Presently installed at the ACT Center of Asia Culture Complex in Gwangju, South Korea, Light Barrier co-ordinates eight projectors, directing their light onto a concave cluster of 630 mirrors. As a result, an astounding 16 million ‘pixel beams’ of refocused light simulate shapes above the array.  The array itself was designed in simulation using an algorithm which — with subtle adjustments to each mirror …read more

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