The Engadget Show: Kindle etching and DIY adventures with Adafruit Industries

If you'll recall, some months ago we held a little competition for readers to submit artwork destined for laser-etching on the backsides of Amazon's Kindle. After everyone voted on the top five out of the mountain of selections, we took the gaggle of readers down to our friends at Adafruit Industries (headed up by the lovely and delightful Limor Fried and Phil Torrone) for some time under the laser. While we were there getting our etch on with their massive laser, we convinced Limor and Phil to show off some of the other crazy kit they've got in the labs -- and we've captured it all on film... er, video. Take a look at our excursion into the world of dynamic DIY'ing -- we think you'll like what you see. Check it out after the break!

You can also see all of the previous episodes by clicking right here.

Host: Joshua Topolsky
Produced and Directed by: Chad Mumm
Edited by: Michael Slavens
Titles by: Julien Nantiec

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Etched Kindles

[danreetz Posted Dec 3rd 2009 7:45AM]

One of the other winners was asking me about the quality of their engraving, which is a little pixelly. In the video you can see the lasers operating much like a printer, going left-to-right as it engraves. I sent this explanation and I thought people here might like to read it:

I have a laser. There are two modes of laser operation. "Bitmap" and "Vector". Bitmap mode moves the laser head like a printer, doing raster scan. The laser is fired once per raster location. "Vector" fires the laser at a given frequency, say, 3khz, and moves the laser along the paths in your artwork. The density of your artwork would be a problem no matter what, because if the laser actually followed the paths, it would have been working for hours and hours. I actually kept my design simple for this reason. The other problem with vector engraving your design is since the laser runs at one power setting -- they say 60% in the video, which is a good "rule of thumb" number for engraving -- if any of your vectors criss cross or run over each other, the depth at that location is unpredictable. At some point, the laser could have made a really ugly mess of the back of your Kindle.

The video shows the laser operating in bitmap mode for all the Kindles, including mine (Assembly Diagram). The reason for the pixellation is that a laser cannot do shades of gray, so any artwork that has less-than-black must be dithered. The maximum resolution of any laser to do grayscale artwork is limited by the dithering mode. The other limiting factor is the lens of the laser. It is hard to make a laser spot small. Their laser has a 2" lens, which has a spot size of a few thousands of an inch. Thus, it makes no sense to use an engraving resolution of more than 3-500 DPI. Running the laser, at its maximum, again, 1kdpi, is a waste of time. Since the expensive thing about the laser is replacing the tube, which has a finite life like any other lamp, they made an economical decision and made bitmaps from our vectors.

You can view the file format requirements as keeping the riff raff out.

If anyone wants my design on their Kindle, the artwork is public domain and available on my blog and in previous Engadget posts about the contest.

[mikmik111 Posted Dec 3rd 2009 9:27AM]

to the laser!

[ryanpmack Posted Dec 3rd 2009 2:23PM]

I'm the creator of the Library Card design, I really like reading on the Kindle, but would like to have the money to pay my bills at the end of the month more, so I've decided to sell it. I've been using it very gently for the last couple weeks, with a black silicon slip-on case to increase the perceived contrast while reading (unfortunately this case hides the laser engraving). It is the US version of the Kindle and has the latest firmware 2.3 installed for PDF support.

If you're interested, I've listed it at http://bit.ly/7BgIeS

I've also released the original artwork under a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial Share Alike License here http://bit.ly/77ZMKl

[ryanpmack Posted Dec 8th 2009 12:19PM]

Dropped the price on it... $219

[ryanpmack Posted Dec 9th 2009 11:05AM]

All gone...

[Coolarj10 Posted Dec 8th 2009 5:46PM]

This video was really well made! (the music, transitions, and overall flow was fantastic)

[FeatherKing Posted Dec 24th 2009 1:01AM]

I drag my wife to this thing because we happened to be in new york. She sleeps through half of it, wakes up and wins an xbox. Go me? I need to download it still to she if I can see her sleeping on camera

[decalex Posted Dec 24th 2009 11:43AM]

is there an 'audio only' version (mp3) of the show?

[teejosaur Posted Dec 24th 2009 3:33PM]

Is the girl in the video from EC? She seemed like the type and I spied the course six shirt.

[eddyvlad Posted Feb 26th 2010 10:03PM]

Awesome laser!! PEW PEW PEW!!!