Comment by hologram-paul | Hacker News Reader

Comment by hologram-paul | Hacker News Reader

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Hello again HN! 12 months ago I told you LitiHolo (I’m the founder) was working to create a 3D Hologram Printer, and asked for your input. Well, we built it!

I've been involved with hologram printers all the way back to my grad school days (MIT Media Lab), and have built custom industrial versions for in-house commercial hologram work. But more recently LitiHolo has been focused on simple educational holograms kits. With this 3D Hologram Printer, we are kind of bringing the two together -- a simple hologram printer that makes the technology more affordable and accessible.

These are true laser-recorded holograms, and we are starting small and simple to get things off the ground (think Makerbot for holograms). Would love your feedback on how we can continue to make hologram technology like this more accessible, as well as ideas for possible killer apps and use cases.

Here's our previous HN post from 12 months ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22616010

And full disclosure: we have launched a Kickstarter project for this, but would appreciate your input whether you back the project or not.

Two suggestions for your site:

• Knock off the first 30 seconds of your 'interior shots' video where the machine is presumably registering itself. I don't much care about that :)

• Show the resultant printed film from the side on somewhere, so we can see how thin it is. From first glance, I got the impression the output was quite thick, whereas apparently it's only 16 microns (taken from your spec sheet). It might seem obvious to you, but it wasn't here and I think would be much more impressive.

Neat tech, I've forwarded it to someone who might have use for it.

Good luck!

Thanks! The film plates are on 2mm thick glass, and the actual holographic recording layer is 16 microns, with a coversheet material over that.

I agree with the feedback of having a picture better capture the thickness of the holograph plate (or whole assembly, whatever that's called). From the Buzz Lightyear picture I got the impression that it would be something like a thick picture frame, but that doesn't match the 2mm description.

Would it be possible to use these as badge photos? I feel like it would be pretty cool to have a hologram picture on your badge.

The glass film plates keep the film stabilized for the hologram exposures, but it is possible to peel the film off after recording the holograms.

Will work on seeing if we can get better imagery of the hologram thickness.

Yuri Denisyuk's original concept for wavefront reconstruction was to make a little 3D ID picture of a face, inspired by a Russian sci-fi story.

Denisyuk is one of the fathers of holography (his hologram technique was one of the first to allow white-light viewable holograms, also called reflection holograms). Along with Gabor, Leith, Upatnieks, and my professor at the MIT Media Lab, Steve Benton.

Can the layers be side-illuminated? If so, could these be layered, with some compensation for angle employed to account for depth, allowing you do fake RGB?

ed - eg. each 16 micron sheet is side-illuminated with a specific colour, and then three or more holographic sheets are embedded in between the glass plate and cover?

Our LitiHolo hologram film is full-color sensitive, and the finished holograms are transparent, so layer is possible.

We've started with a printer that is single-color initially to get this off the ground, but eventually we would like to have a full-color version of the printer in the future with RGB recording directly in one layer.

This is a super cool project and I will definitely be buying one. However, I've been burned too many times on Kickstarter hardware projects (most spectacular loss was the Lily Camera) - nowadays I just pay the premium for a guaranteed shipping date. Some companies like Glowforge actually handled multiple delivery delays quite well, and raised venture capital so they wouldn't have to touch Kickstarter funds for overhead costs.

Excited to follow your project and eventually have one sitting in my workshop!

Thanks! We really do want to do this the right way, and grow the hologram community long term.

Let me know if you know anyone at Glowforge that could be a guide through the process. Always good to be able to bounce things off someone who's been there.

I remember once seeing a hologram of a microscope where if you put your eye in the right spot you could see the item under magnification. Would something like that be possible with this system? Another thing that comes to mind is pairing this with some kind of computational holographic camera or something using those awesome new imaging TOF range sensors. Being able to make semi-instant holographic polaroids would probably capture people's imaginations.

The microscope hologram is a cool one! Could definitely do something like that with our 3D Hologram Printer.

One of the other very memorable holograms out there is the Kiss, which is also possible (see our Kiss demo hologram).

I think holographic cameras would certainly be something that would be in the future for us. Glad to see you are already looking there!

The (sadly closed) Museum of Holography in Chicago had a similar hologram with a telescope you could "look through". I saw it once nearly 20 years ago, but the memory is burned into my brain. I would love to see it again, if only just to have that strange feeling of my perception being twisted again.

Definitely a formational memory for me as well. There was a hologram gallery in a mall in Orem, Utah in the early 90's. I spent hours in there, but could never afford to buy one. I wish these were more available. I did manage to buy one about 10 years ago, but sadly it was lost in a move.

I really need to acquire a bunch for the science museum I'm going to open. Will probably need a bunch of kits as well. This is the sort of thing that can change someone's life as a child. There's no replacement for that sense of wonder.

I agree that holograms have a way of grabbing kids' imaginations! Perhaps you could get a 3D Hologram Printer as well and make your own hologram exhibit for the science museum. So the next generation of kids can get hooked.

The Chicogo Museum was amazingly packed with holograms practically floor to ceiling. The telescope one is another one to remember, with the front poking out into the viewer's side of the hologram, and the ability to put your eye up to is and see through.

Hopefully there will be a series of holograms made on our 3D Hologram Printer as an homage to older holograms like this that made an impression. That is what we were trying to do with our Kiss hologram.

Good luck on your kickstarter. Hope you guys achieve your goals and ship this amazing tech!

I tried searching for the term "hogel size" I assume it is somewhat equivalent to resolution. Can you expand on it and tell us what are the limiting factors around resolution and how it can be improved in the future?

I am now curious how commercial sticker size holograms are printed.

Thanks! The hogel size is physically determined by things like the aperture size (in our case 1x1mm to start, with a stretch goal for 0.5x0.5mm), but also laser power, and just how long it takes to print each hogel and as a result the full hologram. Double the resolution is 4X the number of hogels.

I know I don't have the patience/dexterity/not knocking the table over to use the hologram kits, and the printer is not in my budget, but I would love to see some of the finished (developed?) holograms. You might consider selling some of those?

Good idea! And I'm also expecting that some of the people who do get the 3D Hologram Printer will be selling holograms of their 3D holograms as art, portraits, etc.

This is a transmission hologram, not a reflection hologram, right?

These are reflection holograms.

Also sometimes called white-light holograms because they can be viewed with a regular spot light, sunlight, or even a smartphone flashlight.

That's cool. You should make that clear on the website, I definitely got the impression from the photos that they were in a frame.

Thanks! Will see how to highlight that better.

never got an answer back when i contacted you a year ago to see if this could be used for casting holograms into chocolate

Sorry about that, it has been a crazy year, and things have fallen through the cracks occasionally. The holograms with our film do not form surface relief patterns, and would not work for the "press the hologram into chocolate" idea.

However, existing embossed holograms do have the surface relief and can be used for this.

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