Luke Metcalfe
Circuit Sculptures
December 2020
I've been following the work of Mohit Bhoite, an electrical engineer based in San Francisco, for some time. Mohit turns complex circuits into beautiful sculptures, incorporating active and passive components, seven-segment displays, servos and microcontrollers, soldered together with brass rods. They are often very functional and charming, but always engaging and showcase brilliantly both art and engineering. I highly encourage browsing Mohit's portfolio.
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With Christmas and several birthdays approaching, I wanted to create personal gifts for my friends and family to show my love and appreciation. Inspired by Mohit's work, I decided to create a series of sculptures to showcase the skills I've learned as an engineer.
TIE Interceptor
For my good friend, I decided to create a sculpture based on the "TIE Interceptor" spacecraft from the Star Wars films. The circuit itself is very simple, using a 3V coin battery to power two blinking LEDs and two regular LEDs. The sculpture is centered around a spherical cockpit which houses the battery, and the main body of the sculpture is connected to ground.
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The greatest difficulty in creating these sculptures is that the main structural components - the brass rods - are conductive. This means that often a strong physical connection cannot be made between different areas of the circuit, as this would create a short-circuit. As such, delicate electrical components become integral structural components of the sculptures, resulting in interesting engineering problems and solutions.
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The sculpture became a freeform as I cut and soldered pieces as I saw fit, and I was particularly pleased with how the cockpit turned out. The sculpture took hours to create and was an excellent way to develop my skills in soldering.
Please click on images to zoom!
Stay Tuned!
I created another sculpture in the shape of a Christmas tree which used an astable multi-vibrator to blink alternating LEDs. This circuit was far more complex than the TIE Interceptor and posed an interesting and exciting engineering challenge.
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Please check back soon as I work on taking more detailed pictures and videos of the sculptures!