NYC Resistor and Urban Glass have joined forces to bring you some tech inspired crafty creativity. The class is scheduled for Sunday, January 18th at 10am.

Resistor’s new cutting laser will be put to use to etch designs in glass through a masking tape resist. Amazingly, the masking tape holds up well against 60 psi of flying sand. Maybe we should all make masking tape ponchos for next year’s Burning Man.

The designs are taken to Urban Glass to sand blast the etch a little deeper to accommodate enamel.

Then, enamel is painted into the sand blasted recesses.

The lasered masking tape is removed, and the glass is ready for firing overnight with a long ramp up and a long cool down cycle.

The fired pieces will look very similar to this. The enamels don’t change color much in firing unlike some ceramic glazes.

Taprats, an iterative design tool, was used to simulate an Islamic tile pattern. The lower half pattern is the negative of the upper half.

We’re also experimenting with halftoned images. More images to come!

This is the first in a series of exploratory classes combining the creative power of two great Brooklyn spaces. Come join us on Sunday. The class sign-up is here.

After blowing the circuit breaker and fusing a dimmer coil with a bridge rectifier at 130v DC, it was time to start small — one 9v battery at a time.

I’ve been wanting to anodize titanium and use the laser to create masks for the different colors. Translucent oxides form on titanium with heat or voltage. (I also tried lasering colors into niobium, which oxidizes similarly to titanium, but didn’t find the color band with the CO2 beam — just grey/black.) With both niobium and titanium, each volt corresponds to a thickness of oxide and refraction of a color. If you start at the highest voltage and work your way down to the lowest voltage for the colors you choose, theoretically, you can strip off the protective tape mask after each color is obtained and the thicker oxides (higher voltages) will be unaffected by lower voltage oxide layers. In essence, when anodizing with a tape mask, you are using a reductive method of printmaking like linoleum block printing, only the ink is an oxide layer.

How it works – DC voltage is applied to the surface of the titanium/niobium with a sponge clipped into an electrode. The ideal electrolyte to complete the circuit is phosphoric acid, so you wet the sponge with cola, or a solution of TSP, Cafiza, or Miracle-Gro. Two factors determine the oxide layer thickness: Voltage and time. If you vary the speed of your sponge with the electrolyte across the titanium, you’ll get a variety of colors due to incomplete oxidation at and below that voltage. It’s also possible to make a gradient by starting slowly and speeding up as you sponge across the metal.

The image above shows voltage swatches from 1v to 140v. (Most of the swatches haven’t been oxidized yet.) The little squares were cut with the laser into clear packing tape and peeled off for their specific voltage. The first yellow swatch was easy — one 9v battery. As the batteries were chained in series, the voltage was read (some were weaker) and the corresponding swatch was oxidized. 99v (12 batteries) is a beautiful green that I will definitely use again. The red at 18v is also noteworthy. When the new rectifier arrives, I’ll fill in the in-between voltages on the swatch sheet. It’s really liberating to be able to anodize without a $500+ commercial anodizer.

A little background on my motivation: I have a daily project (ringaday.com) that continually challenges my creativity and craftsmanship. NYC Resistor is the perfect environment to explore a variety of mediums, processes, and ideas. I’m partial to the laser. It puts the rapid in rapid prototyping. Join us for Craft Night one Thursday evening and come away with inspiration for your creative idea.

Come learn the basics of iPhone and iPad development! This 3-hour class will introduce you to the high-level concepts of the iOS SDK, the Objective-C language, the Xcode IDE including Interface Builder and the iOS build system, MVC using UIKit, Apple’s most common and useful frameworks, networking using web services, and much more! This class is offered April 28 and is taught by Resistor members Chris Beauvois and Jon Santiago.

Sign up at Eventbrite: http://www.eventbrite.com/event/2837754801

Come learn to rapid prototype with NYCR’s 35 watt laser. We still have a few spaces left in this favorite Resistor class. Who doesn’t want to learn how to use a laser beam to cut perfect lines?

Sign up at EventBrite: http://www.eventbrite.com/event/2086433579

This Sunday you can learn to use our Epilog 35 watt laser to rapid prototype that idea you’ve been kicking around. If you’ve got a project, a plan, or if you just want to make an enclosure for your arduino, Astrida will walk you through the steps A-Z. This hands-on class will introduce you to laser cutting, materials, and file preparation.

Register at EventBrite: http://www.eventbrite.com/event/1913881471