◄◄ // EXP.02

03 · EXPERIMENTS — DIRECTED IMAGING

STATUS · WORK IN PROGRESS◄ EXP.01 EXP.03 ►
Molten copper pours along the strands of the MW monogram on a black board and cools into finished traces

01 / 07 · THE MARK, POURED · CLIP

One mark, taken from vector to copper.

A Houdini simulation pours the monogram on; a diffusion pass finishes the surface.

The simulation decides where everything goes. The model only decides how it looks.

Black circuit-board business card with the monogram in bare copper and gold contact fingers, rendered from the fabrication files

02 / 07 · THE OBJECT · PLATE

The business card is a circuit board.

88.9 × 50.8 mm, black substrate, bare copper, gold finish. Two fabrication runs so far.

Rendered from the files the fab house received. The cards themselves are in circulation.

Six fabrication layers of the card: front copper, mask openings, front silkscreen, back copper, back silkscreen, drills and outline

03 / 07 · CODE TO FAB · PLATE

Generated from code, checked before it ships.

The artwork is written as code, converted to board files, and held to 363 automated checks before an order.

Re-deriving the chip pinout from the datasheet caught a power pin on the wrong pad. A passing suite had missed it.

The NFC revision of the card: a three-turn copper coil around the perimeter, the monogram centred, a small LED at the apex

04 / 07 · REVISION · PLATE

Next revision: the card carries its own antenna.

A three-turn perimeter coil, an NFC tag, and an LED lit by the phone’s field.

Boards are fabricated and on the bench. Assembly and antenna tuning come next; nothing here taps yet.

The same shot twice, wiping from the plain gray simulation render to the finished copper result

05 / 07 · DIRECTED, NOT FOUND · CLIP

The gray render is the instruction.

Left to itself the model invents a scene. Given the clay render as control and one reference frame, it holds the geometry and paints the metal.

25 variations were run and ranked blind before one was kept.

A drill breaking through a dark board, throwing black fragments and curled copper shavings

06 / 07 · LOOP DISCIPLINE · CLIP

63 loops against a written spec. Not converged.

A second shot, a drill breaking through the board, runs unattended against an acceptance spec with a stop rule.

The reference reads as punched through; this still reads as fragments pushed through a hole. The loop stopped itself and is waiting on direction.

  • 363automated checks before a fab order
  • 25directed runs, judged blind
  • 63loops against one written spec
EXP.02 · state of the bench
ItemReadingState
Card, run 16 boards, black substrate, gold finishIn circulation
Card, run 26 boards, 363 / 363 checks, corrected URLIn hand
NFC revision3-turn coil, 0 design-rule violationsAssembly next
Pour simulation144 frames, HoudiniDone
Diffusion finish25 runs, ranked blindHolds on the mark
Finish on the full cardsmall type garbles on the last framesOpen
Drill-through shot63 loops, 3 locked lensesNot converged

07 / 07 · BENCH LOG · LOG

What works, and what does not yet.

The method is the experiment: a simulation or a spec gives direction, a model or a loop does the volume, and a check decides what is kept.

BEAT 01 / 07

Bench log EXP.02 · work in progress · card images are renders from the fab files◄ EXP.01 EXP.03 ►