Laser lumia illuminated obelisk

Recently I built a 10 meter tall laser illuminated obelisk for a AfrikaBurn, the South African regional Burning Man event. I got a lot of help and supplies from people on this and other forums, so I thought I should post my build experience.

Here's the final product:


I bought 10 A140 diodes from Cliff at Cajun Lasers. I mounted the diodes in Aixiz (thanks, Chuck) modules using a brass tube to press fit them in a small vice. I housed two small capacitors in the module to smooth current. I used a LM350 constant current drivers and a 1 ohm resistor to power the lasers. The heatsinks were scrounged from old PCs and hacksawed to size. Here's a photo of one of the drivers:



I used Sketchup to design the projectors in 3d and then exported the 2d designs using a DXF exporting plugin. I had these designs CNC'ed out of 5mm acrylic. I used a 15rpm 12v gearmotor to rotate the lumia wheel. A mate of mine designed and built pulse width modulator circuits to drive the motors. Here's what the finished projectors look like:



The outer obelisks were lit using diodes scrounged from old DVD burners. They were powered using an LM317 with a 4.7 ohm resistor. I connected two diodes in series per one driver since I was using 12V. I ran out of Aixiz modules so I drilled a 6mm hole into a heat sink and press fit the diode:



Finally I used acrylic line generators held by crocodile clips on thin aluminium strips to generate the line. Here are some videos of the effect:

Find Yourself - first laser lumia wheel test - YouTube
Find Yourself; The lumia show. - YouTube
Find Yourself Up Close - YouTube

There are a lot more photos and links if you're curious here: "Find Yourself" at AfrikaBurn 2012 | Facebook

Thanks to everyone who helped

Next year I hope to do some fun stuff with RGB lasers and vibrating water droplets.

Where did you get the glass, and what type of glass did you use?

Just regular textured glass with a fairly even stipple. I'd say there's about 0.5mm between peak and trough of the pattern and each of the dimples in the pattern is about 1.5mm wide. I tried several different patterns but this one seemed to work out best.

Congratulations!!! It turned out awesome.

Hey Rob. I loved the obelisk.

Do you remember when I came to say hi? I was the young blond guy.
I would love to be involved in some sort of laser project next year for AB if you're interested. I just finished my own 1W RGB 30k scanner unit, analog controlled.

Where did you get your lumina wheels?

Ill pm you my email

Howzit, Humphry . Glad you liked it.

The lumia wheels were from Glassmen, but pretty much any glazer will be able to cut you out glass circles.

Cool, thanks the for the offer of help. I'll let you know when things start moving.

:worthy: truly epic!

Amazing results. Were the lasers projected from the external obelisks or internally? That I can't figure out.

Very creative. 5 stars for psy-awesomeness. Would be questioning my sanity if I stumbled upon a laser obelisk like that at a gig.

Externally.
It was truly awesome, and not alone in the crazy mass of Afrikaburn artworks

Soulstorm said:

Amazing results. Were the lasers projected from the external obelisks or internally? That I can't figure out.

Click to expand...

The were projected from the outside red obelisks inwards towards the central obelisk.

Soulstorm said:

Very creative. 5 stars for psy-awesomeness. Would be questioning my sanity if I stumbled upon a laser obelisk like that at a gig.

Click to expand...

It was very tricky to make head or tail of it whatever your mental state. From a distance of 20 meters or so it plausibly looked like it was filled with water with bubbles rising up to the surface. It didn't look like a projection.

Good fun

@Humphry, my bag of goodies from DTR should have arrived today. I also picked up a lab power supply from Communica.

Time to start experimenting with effects for next year