Laser Painter
Andre Lira
Advisor: Yeseul Song
The Laser Painter is a realtime artwork visualization installation for representing user input by taking digital drawings a user is making and displaying them in real time with a UV Laser "painting" on a glow in the dark mesh sheet.
Abstract
Laser Painter is an installation that allows viewers to draw on an iPad and have it be represented by a new kind of plotter, one that uses a UV Laser to draw on a glow-in-the-dark mesh sheet in real time. It uses an XY gantry similar to those found in regular pen plotters or lasercutters/3d printers, but flips the drawing access upwards to project images on a sheet viewable to the audience.
The Laser Painter is an experiment in realtime visualization: while most typical pen plotters require an image to be drawn on software in advance, the Laser Painter immediately paints an image as the viewer interacts with the installation. The quick-fading nature of the glow material makes the artwork ephemeral, only to be experienced by the viewer and onlookers for the duration of the interaction, but in a fantastical way.
Technical Details
An XY gantry consisting of two stepper motors contains a moving platform housing a 1-5mw ultraviolet laser of 405nm. When a user touches the iPad, their finger movements on an XY axis trigger the gantry to move left/right/up/down and activates the laser. The laser is mounted on the gantry and turns on only when the user's finger is touching the iPad. Approximately 500mm above the laser is a mesh sheet covered in a glow-in-the-dark paint. The concentrated energy of the UV laser temporarily makes this material glow, only on the points the laser shines on. This creates a drawing or painting effect which can be observed by the user or any onlookers. Due to the laser pointing straight upwards, user and viewers are safe from directly looking at the beam by being positioned at least 1 meter away from the installation and observing it from an angle.