Happy news! We received a grant from Burning Man this
year for Carbon Garden. The project is to build a garden of flowers
made out of carbon fiber (the same stuff as the stealth bomber,
Boeing’s most advanced airplane wings, and possibly your bicycle fork
if you’re extra cool).

Each flower will have a small flame that can change its size up to 30
times per second from a candle size to about 3 feet. Flowers react to
people around them with ultrasonic range finders, and “talk” to each
other in a language of fire.

Here’s the full project description
http://labs.false-profit.com/blog/carbon-garden

brett

Like the rovers hibernating on Mars, PyroCardium has quietly slumbered the winter on the side of the FPLabs workshop, nestled in its layers of tarp. We hadn’t heard a peep and could only wonder, was it dreaming of fiery heartbeats? What new algorithms might emerge in the spring? Was PyroCardium even alive under there?

PyroCardium in its winter tarp

Today we have our answer. 32 of 40 flame effects tested perfectly straight out the gate. And since 8 had broken at Burning Man, they were apparently unaffected by wind, rain and sleet. This is actually amazing since I hadn’t considered the downslope of its winter resting pad, and water was able to come in through an open end of the tarp. The flame effects actually sat in a pool of water for months. But our materials: aluminum, nichrome wire, ceramic block, stainless steel, copper and brass– none of them rust! And apparently Clippard solenoids are pretty well sealed.

Tested functional flame effects bundled in new hanging storage

In preparation for making carbon fiber flowers, I took a vacuum forming class at Tech Shop.  Everyone was asked to bring in a part to copy.  Then the vacuum former heats up a sheet of CAB (Celulose Acetate Butyrate).  This is the same plastic that all those 3d sign letters are made out of - same process too.  The plastic gets clamped into a frame, and when it starts to sag, swings over your part.  Then you hit the vacuum footswitch and the plastic is instantly sucked into the every nook and cranny.  In my case, a log.

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You have to stuff the undercuts of your part, otherwise the plastic gets pulled under and your part is impossible to get out.

The finished log has fine detail, just like a real Disney log.