[Intro to Fab] week 03 : Op Turntable

When I went to Paris, I could see Dynamo exhibition (A CENTURY OF LIGHT AND MOTION IN ART, 1913-2013) that mostly focused on various Optical illusions. I was there for an exhibition at CHI conference with my one of my projects, ‘Overlapped Playback‘. Actually this project was based on analog optical illusions,  a couple of visitors highly recommended me to go the Dynamo exhibition. I was totally into the exhibitions and it was very impressive and inspirational until now.

So forthis assignment, I would like to build an op-art generator with acrylic material.  There are total two layers with various patterns for the optical illusion. I got those patterns from OPARTICA site.

I drew each pattern and I am going to cut using a laser printer.  And I hope to make it that people can change the each pattern panel and see what differences between speed and combined patterns.

I drew the below different patterns . (Illustrator)

6 differents patterns * 2(bottom & top layers) = total 12 disks

I am going to use a motor, a potentiometer, and switch to turn those pattern disks.

But there are some problems…

first of all,  I do not know how to secure the motor stick with a disk.

<First trial>

I maed a box for the bottom part to hide an Arduino and batteries and

I wanted to make disks by etching with transparent acrylic, I did not work well.

 

I tried to use black markers to paint the etching parts. But etching with black markers(a sharpie and a board maker) was not good for large areas. (or I missed something?)

Anyway I had to use black 1/8in acrylic to cut them it.

<Second trial>

Below designs are not connected each other, so I tried to use with transparent acrylic and black. But for very very small parts, they were melting so that I cannot get the exact size of shapes that I drew.

 

Finally, I got 6 disks! Top three disks are for the bottom with a bearing. (Actually, I did not need to use the bearing at all…)and bottom three disks are for turning with a motor.  When they overlapped two disks, they make different optical illusions.

After that, I built an Arduino and motor circuits to control the motor speed and on-off.

 

 

Always for me, making or using a motor coupling to assemble with a motor and something is very difficult. And even though it was a very first project for me, I would like to explore more about kinetic and op art. (different speed of two disks, up and down, more than 2 disks and so on)

Laser cutting is super great, fast and easy, but it also has some limitations, the gap between a file and cut pieces, singed surfaces and glueing two transparent acrylic pieces clean.

<Final Result>

Op Turntable v01 from Hayeon Hwang on Vimeo.