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.

We had The Hydrogen Economy and PyroCardium steel frames professionally powder coated, but I’ve always wanted try out this process since it produces beautiful, durable results. This holiday season I made some candleholders from iron pipe fittings then powder coated them at home with a kit I bought for $140 and an electric oven.  The shine and vibrant colors really brings the piece together, and they make good gifts for those who appreciate industrial sculptures.

About Powder Coating
Powder Coating is an electrostatic process where a charged pigment dust is sprayed into the air with a handheld gun. The pigment particles become positively charged in the gun and stick to the part which is connected to ground. You see powder coating all over the place: bicycles, motorcycles, park benches, cars. My initial impression was that it looks so good I figured the process would require expensive equipment or some hard-won skill. Turns out neither is really the case–you can powder coat at home with an inexpensive kit and an electric oven.

Powder Coating Video

Full details on Instructables

Powder Coated Iron Pipe Candleholder

False Profit Labs made its east coast debut at Boston Decompression on November 8th. Boston’s Decom was a 300 person party in a warehouse loft space that ran from 8pm till about 8am. The smaller size and indoor nature of the event along with the near impossibility of getting permission to run large scale fire at public events in Boston meant that we presented the LED version of Pyrocardium. The project was set in the main room of the party so we were able to get dancers with fast heartbeats to try it out and cause much high speed flashing. Some people would hang out long enough to calm their heart rates and watch the corresponding visuals slow down which they very much enjoyed. Overall, both the Pyrocardium and the party in general went off exceedingly well.

You can find pictures of Boston Decom here: http://bostonburners.org/gallery2/main.php?g2_itemId=46357 (sadly I have not been able to find pictures of the Pyrocardium installation)

False Profit Labs will be Decompressing ourselves, figuratively, and Hydrogen literally, in the form of explosive bubbles. The Hydrogen Economy returns to the official Burning Man Decompression festival in San Francisco this Sunday. We’ll be running the bubbles from 7pm till midnight, but the party is all day long. Whether you want to argue about engineering vs science, government bailouts, or just want to pick up a t-shirt or sticker, we’ll be there for all your physical and meta-physical questions.

San Francisco Decompression
19th Street @ Minnesota

After a minute of cleaning up the playa dust from Burning Man, and playing on the river at Priceless, we are now home, semi-rested and are happy to report that the desert was good. Setup took three days in the hot sun, cold nights, and ever-present dust. Everything broke, such as manifolds, flashback arrestors, needle valves, flow meters, flame effects, bubble machines, circuit boards. But Burning Man requires improvisation and we kept our projects up and running all week.

We took The Hydrogen Economy to new heights.

PyroCardium’s heartbeats of fire pulsed far across the playa.

People liked to explode hydrogen bubbles.

And everyone wanted to know how PyroCardium works.

Toxic Bloom, lit up with four colors of fire triggered by that old memory game “Simon”.

Ready. Set. Playa! False Profit Labs is putting the finishing touches on The Hydrogen Economy and PyroCardium then heading to Black Rock City. Our playa schedule in just a minute, but first a word about powder coating. It’s a process in which a pigment is applied electrostatically and then cured in an oven. We’ve powder coated just about all the steel in both projects and the results are truly beautiful. It’s also extremely durable, with an undercoat certified to 1000 hours in salt water. Hopefully that should hold back the alkalinity of playa dust in the desert.

At Burning Man you can catch The Hydrogen Economy and PyroCardium across from False Profit camp at 4:30 and Esplanade. Both projects will be operating nightly from 10pm until 2am, and until 4am the night of the burn. And if you like to dance, we’ll be throwing a party on Tuesday night.

PyroCardium, our newest interactive fire sculpture was a hit at Fire Arts Festival. 40 flame effects igniting in quick succession all around you every time your heart beats. Just pick up the stethoscope, place it on your chest, and the flames will certainly send an adrenaline shot that will amp up your pulse. Resuscitation please!

KTVU did a nice piece including False Profit Labs. You can watch the video here: http://www.ktvu.com/video/16839645/index.html

PyroCardium at Fire Arts Festival

The Hydrogen Economy was also in full effect with brand new modularized entirely clear plastic bubble machines. More bubbles, more explosions. And finally, the appropriate labels to add to the propane and oxygen knobs. You see, the bubbles are always full of hydrogen, but adding a bit of oxygen makes them go boom, and adding propane makes them flash.

Hydrogen Economy Control Panel

Enjoying a few exploding bubbles.

PyroCardium, our newest sculpture in the form of 40 flame effects that visualize your heartbeat in fire, will make its debut at Fire Arts Festival in Oakland this week. If you’ve kept up with our blog or come to Maker Faire, you’ve seen our small spiral prototype. Well, this is something quite different: a 20-foot diameter ring with 40 flame pipes stretching out at all sorts of angles. Now you get to place our stethoscope to your heart while you are inside the ring of fire.

Fire Arts Festival is Wednesday through Saturday, July 9-12 at night near The Crucible in Oakland. We’ll have PyroCardium, and of course our exploding hydrogen bubbles will be popping in The Hydrogen Economy as well. Ticket information can be found here: http://www.thecrucible.org/fireartsfestival/ . Fire Arts Festival is easily accessible by BART from anywhere in the Bay Area.

PyroCardium First Light: A video from setup at Fire Arts Festival