Texlem 2012 (Saturday February 4)

Saturday was down to business. There were workshops on lumia including how to select candidate glass for lumia and what other objects are useful, glass cutting, making "torture tubes", plastic warp-wheel manufacture and customization/art, and vacuum-forming plastic to reproduce desirable glass patterns and add shapes in addition to the original texture, and deburring the glass wheels we had cut, and a session on tuning of projector servos as well as beam alignment. Saturday night was a LASER show with at least eight projectors..
some videos

Glass workshop table. Some work was also done outside due to making a little smoke with the torch..

Various hole saws for cutting out the warp wheels. Warp wheels are plastic that has been warped from flat and heated on one or both sides to bubble up the surface and cause diffractions. The better effect seems to come when the beam passes obliquely through the wheel at various angles, so if it is warped the beam spends a variable time in the plastic for increased effect.

Vacuum-forming machine. This one is about 5". A red-hot element like an oven broiler is in the black top and heats the plastic to be formed. The sheet is them pressed down over a mold and vacuum drawn to form it.

Glass grinder. The edges of cut glass are too sharp, so they can be smoothed with this tool. Water is the lubricant against a diamond coated cylinder.

Borosilicate or fused silica tubing and items are cast-offs from a bead-maker's shop. These offer many interesting ways to create lumia optics and are just about free..

"Torture-Tubes" that have been made. An axle can fit in the mouth of the little jar, or, it was a jar until it was tortured in a map gas flame with a pick.

An old glass doorknob will create many regular patterns and they should be picked up when available.

Amazingly these inexpensive earrings from "MJ Designs" do a really good job. LASER beams are small, so the lumia glass can also be compact. Technically some hand-held lumia gear could be made with parts like these.

A warp wheel that has just ben cut out, but not processed. It is worth mentioning that metal hole saws do not do a very good job and tend to melt the wheels even at low speeds. This issue will vary with the type of clear plastic used.

It was bound to happen. Apparently the computer took a break for dinner. We all had BBQ with dirty rice and veggies, was really great!

A picture in the sights of a 3W beamshow unit.