Laser Kaleidoscope uses more 3D printing and less scavenging

laser-kaleidoscope

At first we thought that [Pete Prodoehl] was using the wrong term when calling his project a Laser Kaleidoscope. We usually think of a kaleidoscope as a long tube with three mirrors and some beads or glass shards in one end. But we looked it up and there’s a second definition that means a constantly changing pattern. This fits … Read the rest

Laser Spirograph

laser-spirograph

Here’s a weekend junk bin project if we’ve ever seen one. [Pat] used a quartet of computer fans to make his laser Spirograph. Deciding to try this simple build for yourself will run you through a lot of basics when it comes to interfacing hardware with a microcontroller. In this case it’s the Arduino Nano.

The Spirograph works by … Read the rest

Laser Spirograph exhibit repair and upgrade

[Bill Porter] continues finding ways to help out at the local museum. This time he’s plying his skills to fix a twenty-year-old exhibit that has been broken for some time. It’s a laser spirograph which had some parts way past their life expectancy.

He started by removing all of the electronics from the cabinet for further study in his … Read the rest

Laser cut clock reminds us of a Spirograph

[Brian] from Louisville’s LVL1 hackerspace sent in this laser cut gear clock that’s almost unlike any other clock we’ve seen before. [Brian] also put up a wonderful Instructable for his build.

Since LVL1 got a better laser cutter a lot of neat projects have been piling up. [Brian] based his clock around two cheap stepper motors driven by a … Read the rest

Computer aided cake decoration

This contraption lets you decorate your cake at the push of a button. It’s a stretch to call it computer aided as this is purely a mechanical monster, but we still enjoy the apparatus and see its CNC potential (we’re still waiting for that pizza printer to hit the market too). An icing syringe has been modified with a … Read the rest

Spirograph generator

The Agnewgraph I can turn out a pretty nice Spirograph drawing. Instead of relying on meticulously acurate CNC hardware, it uses a Spirograph stencil similiar to that business card we’re so fond of. The key to the [Mpark's] design is an analog joystick which is attached to the pen. As the pen follows the plastic guide around, a Propeller … Read the rest

RGB laser

laser_RGB_21_big

Last month we had the pleasure of bringing you [FireMyLaser's] green laser spirograph. Just green is great for a while, but why not add red and blue for a full spectrum of color! [c4r0] steps in at this point to bring us his red green blue laser. He dug around inside Blu-ray players and DVD drives until he … Read the rest