I remember that as the burn wheel. It was a piece of shiny black plastic mounted on a stepper. they would advance the stepper every time the effect was to be used creating a clean spot. They would then reflect the laser of of the plastic on to the dome, as the plastic melted the image would bloom in a 'big bang' fashion.
After 200 shots you would have to move the beam up or down a little to get a new clean ring.
chad
OT- p.s. Steve don't forget to add a good 2 stage chop to your synth..
When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro.
That reminds me of something we did in 3rd grade or so. I don't remember exactly how it worked but the teacher rigged up something on the overhead with melted crayons or something. As it got hot it from a candle or something it metlted them and it projected colors oozing around. I remember that the teacher turned off the lights and we listened to music when we did that. I didn't really get it, being only 8 years old or so. But now that I recall that I wonder if the teacher had been hitting the LSD during class. LOL. It was the early 70s, after all.
Hey Kats -
May I suggest a nice, albeit, WAAAY-not 'exhaustive', 'ref. library' of a few lumia / grating fx...
http://www.laserium.com/gallery/
..Ok, so I am a little biased! But I mean, you wanna talk mezmerizing fx?? How cool is THIS or THIS or THIS!!!
If there is about to be a 'rekindling' of interest in lumia / machita / grating fx, I can see if Ivan is willing to sell some old 'stock', too. There is an 'optics room' at Laser Images, that is like all the scenes in all the movies, when the 'hunters' FINALLY enter into the 'treasure room' / cave / whatever, and there are just glittery little 'gems' EVERYWHERE! I know it leaves me 'weak at the knees', thinking of all the possibilities...
HERE is a 'little bit of inspiration' fer ya, fellas... Heh, note the 'rhinestone wheel' - VERY cool fx with a WL!!! Mis dos centavos is: buy anything that Steve (mixedgas) and/or Pat (Laserman532) offer-up, cause they will be great, I feel confident giving a 'plug', even sight-unseen.. I'll let ya's know what Ivan has to say...trust me, adding these fx to your 'boxes' will be worth whatever 'modest investment' / time you end-up making for them...
WOW, just thinking about seeing guys add lumia and machita fx to the 'showboxes' makes me ... what's next, BEAM POSITIONS??!! Awesome, awesome, awesome...
I am hoping to be able-to post a personal 'art-shot' soon that should stimulate further-interest in these 'old school' fx... ...plus,
it's just a killer 'concept' that was 'begging' to be done, and I THINK - not sure - I may be the 'first one' to have done it!...(I searched pretty-thouroughly, and had not seen it done anywhere, at least...) - how cool would that be - an ORIGINAL IDEA - in 2009!!!
We'll see...
Anyhoo, njoy...
j
....and armed only with his trusty 21 Zorgawatt KTiOPO4...
Very nice example! I have been burning up google looking for something like that. I just went to the glass shop over lunch today and loaded up on some experimental material. The guy might have thought I was nuts as I shined my pointer thru each one onto my hand, but when I showed him some of the nice patterns, he seemed to get it.
Man, I had 2 of those old glass doorknobs that I bought at a garage sale years back- coincidentally I gave them to the neighbor that gave me the door mentioned in the first post! My house is full of 'em though, it was built in 1913. Another nice thing about using a doorknob is the fact that it comes pre-built with a sturdy post right through the center. Maybe one of the knobs in my house might have to "dissapear" for some reason.
I am also thinking about mounting the lasers on a sled of sorts, one that could be driven by a leadscrew. Maybe I could rig up some crude positioning system with a stepper motor- it might be fun to figure out.
So far so good- Thanks for all the great responses so far! This is the type of creativity & gadget feedback that makes PL such a great little oasis for folks who get into this obscure fascination!
-Mike
Mike,
I too have heard about the "glass doorknob" effect. Could you test this out and post a pic for all to see of both the image and what the doorknob looks like - I suspect that you want something faceted or bumpy, not smooth? Thanks.
Then I can go find one myself....
I plan one of using these to shuffle the lumia wheels and Poly-20 grating via DMX control:
http://home.att.net/~northlightsyste...2toRCservo.htm
I did a little testing using one channel of the board with a standard hobby servo, with the Poly-20 wheel attached directly to the servo output wheel. So far, it looks like it the DMX-controlled positioning is VERY accurate & repeatable!
The board can control up to 8 separate servos, which could open up a LOT of possibilties for beam shuffling! The only caveat is you would have to account for the reaction time of a servo, which would be a bit slower than using a simple actuator.
These boards are designed so a DMX fail would either lock the servo in place, or recenter (your option).
SO, you could have a "fail safe" of sorts
BTW -
The company owner is quick to respond to questions, and was VERY quick in delivering the product!
Randy
Last edited by Stuka; 01-15-2009 at 11:17.
RR
Metrologic HeNe 3.3mw Modulated laser, 2 Radio Shack motors, and a broken mirror.
1979.
Sweet.....
Hey Randy, thanks for the link- that's a great plan. I'll have to seriously consider that as an option.
Ya know one other thing I noticed while at the glass shop? It seemed like with different glass textures, the resultant patterns had a really wide range of widths. What I saw was that 2 pieces of glass with a similar pattern (except one is finer in size) might produce a similar looking image, yet one would be like 5x larger than the other.
I opted to lean towards the finer side, since this would cause such a drastic scan angle that a projector might end up needing to be as close as 10 feet in front of a screen to project a 15 foot image! This size difference is another great reason to have a wide variety of glass textures, and the ability to bounce back and forth from one to the next.
-Mike