Crouching Beaver Hidden Institute

by adedoyin

Overview

I wanted to experiment with the thermochromatic ink that Leah showed us last week.  Just a reminder: thermo  = heat and chroma = colour.  It is an ink that changes its behavior when the temperature rises over a certain base level.  For example:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I was also inspired by pictures of silhouettes, and so I decided to make a picture of something in silhouette with a very colorful background.  I wasted a bit of time trying to figure out what to do, and finally decided on making a silhouette of MIT.

 

Process

First, I started with this drawing on autocad:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Next, I cut out this stencil from a 12″ x 12″ sheet of paper with the laser cutter:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Then, I sprayed the base layer of black paint on a 12″ x 12″ piece of acrylic:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

After that, I used the stencil to map out the layer of conductive ink, that would activate the thermochromatic ink:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Then, I sprayed on the second layer of black paint to mask the conductive ink.  Unfortunately, something went wrong and the paint got messed up.  I’m not sure what happened, but some suggestions are that because I used two different kinds of inks for the black layers, they reacted badly:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Lastly, I used the stencil again to paint on the thermochromatic ink, and voila!:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Lessons Learned

Unfortunately, it was not the layer of conductive ink that caused the wonderful colors to show.  It was a regular hair-dryer.  There are three possible reasons for why this did not work

  1. the area I was trying to heat up was too big
  2. the black paint successfully shielded the thermochromatic ink from the conductive ink
  3. the voltage I was using was too low

 

Future Applications

I still want to use thermochromatic ink in my final project (and not require a hair dryer) so I’m going to experiment a little more.  But instead of using conductive ink, I want to try sinking a strand of steel thread in a trace on the acrylic and seeing if that works.

 

Presentation: Crouching Beaver Hidden Institute