Making Patterns With Shutters

Hi, this is a little (Short) Instructable showing how to make an animated pattern using shutters (silhouette).

This is an old thing, you used to find on old clocks to give an illusion of sparkly display.

It is a very simple method, to give a very cool animation.

Some thin card.

1. Preferably two colours that have a good contrast to each other.

Things to cut the card with.

1. Scissors.
2. Sharp modelling knife.
3. Straight edge.
4. Compass.

I have a laser cutter, so I am able to cut fine precise shapes.

1. There is no reason not to upscale this so that it can be made easily with the tools you have.

What is a shutter?

1. A shutter put simply, is something that blocks the path of something else.
2. In this case I will be using some black card to hide some yellow card.

A shutter can be any shape.

1. I will be using slots in this project, so the effect is like the opposite of a shutter.
2. You could say it is where the shutter is not, that gives the effect we are after.

To get the effect we want we use two shutters and a back plane that has good contrast to the shutter.

1. Only one shutter needs to move.

The way it works is:

1. There are two shutters with slots in.
2. The slots in the shutters only let you view the back-plane where both slots align to leave a gap.
3. As one of the shutters moves, the position where the slots align change position.
4. The shape of the two aligned slots give you a new shape that the back-plane can be viewed through.

Making different shutters with different shaped slots can give you different results.

I have attached a DXF file for the shutters I have used.

Place one shutter over the Back-plane.

1. The first shutter can be fixed.

The second shutter needs to be movable.

1. Both shutters are exactly the same.
2. The second shutter needs to be place up side down.
3. Pin the second shutter over the first shutter in the centre.
4. Rotate the second shutter to get the effect shown above.