The Smell of Molten Projects in the Morning

Ed Nisley's Blog: Shop notes, electronics, firmware, machinery, 3D printing, laser cuttery, and curiosities. Contents: 100% human thinking, 0% AI slop.

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  • Monthly Image: CD Diffraction

    Just to see how it worked, I engraved the Tek Circuit Computer scales on scrap CDs:

    CNC 3018-Pro - front overview
    CNC 3018-Pro – front overview

    At first, I hadn’t correctly scaled the text paths, but the diffraction patterns caught my eye:

    Tek CC on CD - bottom - unscaled text
    Tek CC on CD – bottom – unscaled text

    The illumination comes from two “daylight” T8 LED tubes in a shoplight fixture, running left-to-right, so it seems I held the camera rotated 1/4 turn in landscape mode. The pix look OK either way.

    Bottom deck:

    Tek CC on CD - bottom
    Tek CC on CD – bottom

    Middle deck:

    Tek CC on CD - middle
    Tek CC on CD – middle

    Top deck, with the camera held portrait-style:

    Tek CC on CD - top
    Tek CC on CD – top

    I’m a sucker for diffraction patterns …

    The tiny engravings don’t photograph well, because they’re floating atop the transparent disc and the rainbow patterns from the data layer, but they still come out OK even when scaled to fit on a hard drive platter:

    Tek CC - bottom deck - scaled to HD platter
    Tek CC – bottom deck – scaled to HD platter

    Looking good!