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.

Tag: Art-ish

They might be Art

Subpixel Zoo: Wall Hanging

Having herded all the denizens of the Subpixel Zoo into one LightBurn workspace, framing them seemed appropriate:

SubPixel Zoo – wall hanging

We had some 18×24 inch frames which fit a standard construction paper size. The paper colors aren’t nearly as vivid as a real artist would want, but they’ll suffice for my simple needs.

Lay out a template and decide 180 mm blocks fill the frame:

SubPixels – LightBurn 18×24 template

Offse the blocks 2 mm outward for cutting clearance and make a fixture:

SubPixels – LightBurn 18×24 fixture

The outer rectangle matches a blank sheet of corrugated cardboard cut by hand to fit the platform. The inner rectangle marks a line around the 18×24 inch position of the paper, giving me a mark within which I can center the paper well enough by eyeballometric approximation.

Cutting the blocks and marking the lines produces the template:

SubPixel Zoo – laser fixture and chaff

It’s held in place by four finger-crushingly strong magnets. If I ever do this again, I’ll throttle back on the power for the corner targets, because the laser cannot reach the top speed marking the outline, so it cut through the top layer of cardboard at the targets.

The layers for the 8×8 versions have 170 mm blocks with all the colors properly separated:

SubPixels – LightBurn 8×8 layers

Embiggen the blocks to 180×180 mm, rotate them to their new orientation, then snap them into copies of the new template:

SubPixels – LightBurn 18×24 layers

I can only envision these things in the landscape orientation that will fit the laser platform, but you could build them in their final portrait orientation and rotate the result.

I put the template pattern in the middle of the LightBurn workspace and use Print and Cut to align the fixture with the corner targets. Then it’s just a sequence of laying a sheet of paper on the fixture, selecting the corresponding layout, hitting P to snap the layout to the center of the workspace, and Firing The Laser.

It’s not nearly as pretty as Mary’s quilts, but now I have a wall decoration of my very own.

2025-03-13
Subpixel Zoo: Capturing the Specimens
A Hacker News discussion led to the Subpixel Zoo, which led to thinking the patterns might make interesting layered “art”. After fetching the *.webp images and figuring out how to persuade Thunar to display them, the next step was converting them into paths suitable for laser cutting.

Although the images are algorithmically generated in a common layout, figuring out how to get the outlines as paths seemed to require a journey into the depths of the Pygame library and that would turn into a major digression.

Instead, start with one of the webp images:

sq_RGBY

The deliberate blurring apparently simulates what you see in real life.

Import the image into LightBurn, which converts it to grayscale under the plausible assumption you’re going to engrave the image on something. Then:
- Create a rounded rectangle overlaying the lower-left-most subpixel to good eyeballometric accuracy
- Turn it into a four-element rectangular array, twiddling the center-to-center spacing to match the subpixel layout
- Duplicate those four upward in another array to create a subpixel block, as marked in the upper-left corner of the original image
- Slam another array across the bottom row and upward, twiddling the spacing to match the subpixel block spacing along both axes
Which eventually looks like this:

SubPixels – LightBurn vector overlay

I made the final array absurdly large, cropped it with a square to match the template I used for the layered paper patterns, resized the result to be 170 mm on a side, then dropped the square into the middle of the template:

Subpixel Zoo – Quattron RGBY – LightBurn black mask layer

One gotcha: crop the subpixels on a Fill layer so LightBurn will close the truncated edges, then put them on a Line layer for cutting. The doc explains why, although it’s not obvious at first, as is the fact that you must delete the group of shapes outside the square before it looks like anything happened during the cut operation.

The resulting layout contains all the subpixel rectangles, so it’s what you want for the top black mask layer. Duplicate the pattern and delete the subpixels corresponding to each color, until you have one template for each of the Red / Green / Blue layers:

Subpixel Zoo – Quattron RGBY – LightBurn layers

The blank over on the right is the Yellow layer, which does get a quartet of layer ID holes cut in the lower right corner.

Then it’s just a matter of cutting the blanks, locating the fixture on the platform, dropping the appropriate color sheet in place, cutting it, then assembling the stack in the gluing fixture:

Subpixel Zoo – Quattron RGBY

It’s kinda cute, in a techie way.

I did a bunch of layouts, just to see what they looked like:

Subpixel Zoo – 8×8 layouts

In person, the RGBY patterns look bright and the RGB patterns seem dull by comparison. I’m using cardstock paper, rather than fancy art paper, which surely makes all the difference.
2025-03-07
AI Artistry

My techie news feed spat out a reference to an AI text-to-image generator, so I figured I’d try it out.

The caption is the prompt producing the image, with the style in parentheses …

steam engine black and white engraving full page detailed (art)

Much wheel! Such hinge! Crazy piston! Also, where do the red cowcatcher and amber headlight come from in a “black and white engraving”?

diesel engine black and white detailed (photorealistic)

Well, it is an “engine”.

diesel engine black and white detailed (anime)

Now, that is a manly engine, but with red widgets.

steam boiler
black and white engraving full page detailed (anime)

It has the appearance of an old catalog page, until you look closely.

OK, let’s try for some wildlife …

pileated woodpecker line drawing, black and white, on tree (art)

So. Many. Legs.

stained glass window bird motif (photorealistic)

Not bad. Not bad at all.

coloring book chickadee on twig (art)

Chickadees seem like relentlessly cheerful little birds, but that oddly spherical critter is definitely having a hard time.

phoebe sketch, black and white, detailed, full frame (art)

Oops.

phoebe bird sketch, black and white, detailed, full frame (art)

That must be a mil-spec phoebe, because it definitely doesn’t resemble any phoebe I’ve ever seen.

Bottom line: Although the pictures are much better drawn than I can do, the (in)accuracy of the content prevents it from solving any problems I have.

2024-04-16
Little Fairy Electric Sparklers

From back when “electric” was the new hotness:

Little Fairy Electric Sparklers – box front

The back of the box gets downright multilingual, although there’s no English-language mention of “magnesium” anywhere on the box:

Little Fairy Electric Sparklers – box back

Little Fairy Electric Sparklers – box right

Little Fairy Electric Sparklers – box left

They are most assuredly not electric, which means they have no batteries to corrode and they still work fine:

Little Fairy Electric Sparklers – test firing

They emerged from a box of my father’s memorabilia, most likely packed away by his parents, so they date back to the early part of the previous century. The American Sparkler Company is long defunct, but the Internet never forgets.

You can (maybe) buy sparklers or concoct your own. I donated the remainder to our Young Engineer, who promised to dispose of them in a safe manner.

2024-04-04
CD / DVD Coasters: Foam vs. Cork Backing

Up to this point, I’d been making coasters with a layer of cork on the bottom, held in place with wood glue (for MDF or plywood tops) or an adhesive sheet (for acrylic or glass). Doing that with a CD produced the bottom coaster:

Laser cut CDs – Foam vs MDF-cork backing – detail

Although the Mariner’s Compass pattern looks like it extends over the edge, you’re looking through the transparent polycarbonate at the deep pits burned nearly through the entire disc at the corners of the triangles where the laser head slows.

Although the MDF layer makes the coaster exceedingly stiff, it also makes it entirely too thick and much too fiddly to assemble.

The top coaster is a Guilloche-patterned CD stuck to an EVA foam disk with an adhesive sheet. A small foam disk fills the hub hole and, not incidentally, covers the adhesive that would otherwise be exposed:

Laser cut CDs – Foam coaster backing

It’s stiffer than I expected and works well unless the mug / glass / cup has a wet bottom. Alas, the small channels cut into the CD’s surface fill up with the liquid sealing the coaster to the mug, so it sticks firmly and follows the mug upward off the table.

But they’re kinda pretty, inexpensive, and easy to assemble, which counts for something.

2023-11-10
CD / DVD Data Destruction: Fixturing

Cutting an array of 120 mm holes in chipboard produces a fixture for wrecking CDs:

Laser-engraved CD fixture – loaded

In addition to the obvious cutouts, the fixture has four corner targets:

CD 5×3 Fixture

Which you use with LightBurn’s Print-and-Cut alignment:

Laser-engraved CD fixture – alignment

With fifteen Guilloche swirly patterns imported and snapped into the template and the template aligned to the fixture, Fire The Laser:

Laser-engraved CD fixture – legend

The whole process takes a bit under 25 minutes:

Laser-engraved CD fixture – complete

Which produces a stack of glittery proto-coasters:

Laser-engraved CD fixture – results

Although they’re all pretty-like, turning them into Real Coasters requires a cork base, MDF in the middle, wood glue, and adhesive sheets, all of which seems entirely too much like work.

There ought to be an easier way …

2023-11-09
Laser Cutter: High Power Vectors vs. CD-Rs

Just to see what happens, I tried cutting a shape from a scrap CD-R:

Laser cut CD – in progress

Cutting polycarbonate is a terrible idea, because that cloud consists primarily of The Big Stink™. AFAICT, the cutting fumes are not much more toxic than what burns off acrylic / wood / whatever, but they definitely smell much worse.

In any event, the laser produces a clean cut:

Laser cut CD – on platform

Modulo the charred edges and discoloration:

Laser cut CD – finished

Some of that buffs right out, but overall it’s not worth the effort unless you really need tiny diffraction gratings.

2023-11-06