Making holograms with a pen plotter • Hacker News Board

Re: Making holograms with a pen plotter

#11

Post by nomel » Tue, Aug 11, 2026, 10:41 PM UTC

evilduck wrote: post #6

nomel wrote: post #3

Related, "abrasion holography", with great good success for being hand drawn: http://amasci.com/amateur/holo1.html (1995) Maybe could swap out the pen for a needle?

Something tells me you didn't open the posted link.

I guess I don't know how sharp a pick with an orange handle is from harbor freight, compared to a needle.

Re: Making holograms with a pen plotter

#12

Post by femto » Tue, Aug 11, 2026, 11:38 PM UTC

It would be interesting to augment the plotter with a Unimorph piezoelectric disk scanner [1], to enable finer movement so lines can be drawn closer together.

[1] https://john-alexander42.github.io/simple-stm-web-page/Disk_...

Re: Making holograms with a pen plotter

#13

Post by IshKebab » Wed, Aug 12, 2026, 1:57 AM UTC

I've made these scratch holograms before with a compass. They're pretty fun, but very far from "real" holograms.

Re: Making holograms with a pen plotter

#14

Post by bacon_waffle » Wed, Aug 12, 2026, 3:10 AM UTC

Chocolate is a good medium for holograms :)

Re: Making holograms with a pen plotter

#15

Post by 6510 » Wed, Aug 12, 2026, 4:15 AM UTC

William Beaty had a video of the hands on the car hood. They showed up very detailed some 20 cm under the hood as if people captured inside. Quite the find.

Re: Making holograms with a pen plotter

#16

Post by auscad » Wed, Aug 12, 2026, 6:24 AM UTC

Holography is such a beautiful and fascinating gateway to physics, and it’s so rare to see true demonstrations of it. Sadly, most people have no idea what it is because of how carelessly the term is thrown around, just like in this article. At least the author admits it and provides some kind of excuse, even if it’s at the end.

Re: Making holograms with a pen plotter

#17

Post by mewens » Wed, Aug 12, 2026, 7:08 AM UTC

[flagged]

Re: Making holograms with a pen plotter

#18

Post by stenl » Wed, Aug 12, 2026, 7:46 AM UTC

Related: ”Self Reflected” by neuroscientist and artist Gregg Dunn, https://www.sothebys.com/en/articles/self-reflected-a-giant-...

He uses the third dimension to encode time, so that you get an image of the brain that illustrates how signals propagate dynamically between brain regions.

I have a version of this on my wall and its mesmerizing to look at with the right lighting conditions

Re: Making holograms with a pen plotter

#19

Post by [deleted] » Wed, Aug 12, 2026, 8:49 AM UTC

nomel wrote: post #3

Related, "abrasion holography", with great good success for being hand drawn: http://amasci.com/amateur/holo1.html (1995) Maybe could swap out the pen for a needle?

[deleted]

Re: Making holograms with a pen plotter

#20

Post by srean » Wed, Aug 12, 2026, 9:41 AM UTC

stenl wrote: post #18

Related: ”Self Reflected” by neuroscientist and artist Gregg Dunn, https://www.sothebys.com/en/articles/self-reflected-a-giant-... He uses the third dimension to encode time, so that you get an image of the brain that illustrates how signals propagate dynamically between brain regions. I have a version of this on my wall and its mesmerizing to look at with the right lighting conditions

Beautiful. This needs to be an HN post on its own. Please post. I will upvote.