Doug’s Mirror
I’m really inspired by Daniel Rozin’s mirror explorations. The idea of making a mirror with spinning polyhedra originated when I first saw, Douglas Caine spin a modular origami between his fingers by blowing onto it.
Coffee Stirrer Prototype
In my first attempt, I created a single pixel prototype with coffee stirrers and chopsticks. I tried to see if I can effectively replace the fingers with an artificial fixture. It worked, but it was very flimsy. It wasn’t as easy as I expected it to be. As the fixture should not hold the modular too tight ( which would prevent it from turning ) or too loose which would actually drop it. So finding the right distance was a little difficult.
Plywood Prototype 1
For the second attempt, I tried to make the holding mechanism a little robust by swapping the coffee stirrers with ⅜” plywood salvaged from the junk shelf at ITP. I found a bolt which had the right height of the polyhedra and screwed the wooden arms to it. I also made two dimples on each arm to make the corners of the polyhedra sit in it.
Plywood Prototype 2 ( Laser Cut )
Now for the third attempt, I tried to test a 2x2 pixel grid. With the help of Dimelsa,( a classmate of mine at ITP ), I designed the layout in Rhino ( designs ) and laser cut the pieces in ⅜” plywood. Though the result was visually pleasing, the slots don’t hold the arms tight enough and hence, the polyhedra kept falling. I just wanted to test the mechanism so took the brute force route and hot glued the arms to the right size. Finally, I tried few tests with a hand blower as an air source. The most important learning from this is, to not have a vertical backing that blocked the air. Also, the modulars stopped as soon as I stopped blowing the air. I imagined there would be an overlapping and they wouldn’t stop immediately and might give me an ability to make drawings from a single air source ( that is attached to a robotic arm, pic ). But now, I think, I need an individual air source for each pixel, unless the reduce the friction between the modular and the fixture. Another interesting observation I made is, despite of adding holes on the right ( with an intention to spin the polyhedra only in clockwise direction), the neighboring modules spun anti-clockwise too.
Acrylic Prototype 1
For the next iteration, I look forward to modifying the design ( without the back wall ) and prototype it in ⅛” cast acrylic which I got from Canal Plastics.
To test the material and my dimensions, I decided to make a single pixel version of the new design. Though the output was pretty and matched my expectations, the power from the blower was not sufficient to rotate the modular. I realized that the reduced distance of 2" (from 2.1") between the arms is too tight. Now, with this learning, I’m looking forward to make another iteration with 2.05" and see if it works. But with this single pixel version, I could make it work by physically separating the arms with my fingers. At the least it helped me get a nice video :D
Acrylic Prototype 2
I got ample feedback from Danny Rozin about my mechanical design and based on his suggestion of holding the module from behind and, I tried to make prototype in acrylic this time using head bender. Below is the result,
