Infinity Eyes Panda

I put a lens in the path of an infinity mirror to make electric eyeballs for a panda head made from a wash basin and with 3D printed parts

Charles Baird

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Description

This was a wedding gift for a wedding from a classmate at QVCC. Instead of making an infinite column of LEDs with an infinity mirror, I wanted the images to bend toward the middle as if you were looking out from inside a globe. I used that effect to make the eyes for a panda. The panda head was constructed from a galvanized wash basin and old spotlights that The Bradley Playhouse was throwing out. I used the lenses from the spotlights as well as the covers to seat them.

Details

So the main idea of how the eyes work uses the simulator on https://ricktu288.github.io/ray-optics/

The top row are images with the rays traced and the lower images are the observed rays. The left is a regular infinity mirror (note the column of images represented by orange dots) and the right has the lens in place. The simulator assumes an ideal lens which is why you get a nicer spacing than actually happened. If I did the project again, I would try different ones.

The green dot is a light from the LED strip. This is just a slice, so we only see the two across from each other and their orange images. On the bottom is the cross section of a donut cut mirror. On the top is a regular circular mirror. Here's an illustration. The LEDs are blue, the lens is white, and mirrors are gray.

Project Logs

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Inspiration for Project
Charles Baird • 06/27/2020 at 01:55 • 0 comments

I had been experimenting with infinity mirrors and wanted to make them bend. I liked the idea of the lights converging to some point instead of off to infinity. I tried a few designs like this. Ultimately, I decided to put a lens from an old spotlight in and it came close enough.