Hand-drawn holograms

abrasionholography_20080308.jpg

Jason has a cool item on Hackszine about lo-tek “abrasion holography:”

Typically the creation of a hologram involves lasers and various other expensive equipment and materials. William J. Beaty figured out a low-tech way to create your own holograms using a simple abrasion technique that requires only a compass and a chunk of plastic. He came across the idea while walking through a parking lot, noticing strange hand prints that seemed to float above or deep inside the surface of polished car hoods.

Abrasion Holography – Link

DIY hand-drawn holograms – Link

10 Responses to Hand-drawn holograms

  1. Graeme on said:

    A “compass” is used to point at magnetic north. A “pair of compasses” is used to draw circles.

  2. Sir Real on said:

    This looks more like stereo imaging than holography.

  3. Yes, the stereo pair image is confusing – but bear in mind that it’s used here to show the depth of the image in the hologram. In other words, that’s a stereo pair of the same plate and the effect it displays when seen in person. (It’s not a joke – I’ve done this myself).

  4. This is no more a hologram than a Viewmaster is. This is a dumb article.

  5. Jason Striegel on said:

    Sorry for the confusion. The image in the post is a stereo image of the same chunk of plastic, taken from two different angles. If you look closely, you can see that the visible image of the cube is different from the two perspectives.

    It’s not just a viewmaster-style stereo image. It’s a legitimate holography method that just uses scratches in plastic instead of expensive laser equipment. You can actually move your head around and see “around” the side of the hologram.

  6. John, maybe if you’d stop wallowing in your own ignorance and read the article we’d be spared reading the garbage you spew.

    Jason, there was no confusion in the post. There’s just too many idiots who assume the wrong thing and post based on their wrong assumption rather than actually reading.

  7. airship on said:

    Nice, I assume you’re wrong because I haven’t actually read your comment.

  8. There’s an instructable at
    http://www.instructables.com/id/Make-a-Tool-to-Draw-Scratch-Holograms!/
    that describes building a tool out of a Dremel to make the process easier…

  9. Bill Beaty on said:

    Hey, why did Make have a post about my Hologram article above, but without linking to it? PLEASE edit the link to point to my actual article.

    DRAWING HOLOGRAMS BY HAND
    http://amasci.com/amateur/holo1.html

  10. W. Beaty on said:

    > This is just crying out for someone to generate complex pictures using CNC.

    The scratches must be almost perfectly smooth with no jaggies at all. Normal CNC doesn’t work, but a couple months ago Evan at homeshopmachinist.net found that “drag engraving” does reduce the jaggies enough, see:

    http://bbs.homeshopmachinist.net/showthread.php?t=27081

    > This looks really cool. I’d like to see a video of the process & the resulting image though!

    Lol, I was finally going to do a video just last weekend, but it rained the whole time. These look great in direct sunlight, poor under most light sources except high-power pin spots.

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