My LIGO Commemorative Paperweight Arrived!

When I opened the box I saw that it had some polishing material stuck in between some of the words and numbers. This is pretty normal with steel 3D prints so I was ready to pick the material out with my trusty X-ACTO knife! A few minutes later I was done and it was looking great.

I took some photos of the LIGO paperweight using my Foldio to ensure that I got some good shots. Overall I think it came out well, thought I wish it was a little bigger.

However, it's expensive to print in metal so I think all in all the size is a good compromise. I am especially pleased with the legibility of the text. It's hard to do right in steel, and technically the type shouldn't have passed the vetting process at Shapeways. But I have some experience using this typeface at a smaller size on my steel dog tags so I was confident that it would print.

Enjoy the photos and let me know what you think!

: Detail of LIGO Livingston

: Detail of LIGO Hanford

: size comparison

LIGO Detected Gravitational Waves from Black Holes . . .

Obverse and reverse of the LIGO inspired paperweight

. . . so I decided to make this paperweight to commemorate the birth of Gravitational Wave Astronomy!

It features a stylized representation of LIGO Hanford on the obverse and LIGO Livingston on the reverse with the ACTUAL chirp pattern of gravitational waves detected by each facility.

To make this memento of the historic event (that physicists are rightfully freaking out about) I decided to adapt the technique I use to 3D print sound waves on steel dog tags. First I located and isolated the wave forms from the publicly released audio conversion of the gravitational waves detected by LIGO.

I took that information and created a 3D model of the wave forms. Then I went on google maps and searched for an arial view of the two LIGO facilities and made a 3D model that would represent them accurately. I discovered that the facilities look exactly the same! That gave me the idea to put each on one side of the paperweight along with the "chirp" they detected.

I think the perfect material for these paperweights is steel. It is supposed to be able to weigh down paper! Unfortunately, it takes about 14 days to print these in metal so I created some renders to show what the paperweight would look like.