Artificial eyes are amazing! In this How it’s Made video, the creator uses takes an alginate impression of a patient’s eye and then refines and casts it in acrylic, affixing a hand-painted iris. They even use silk threads to give the look of blood vessels. The video’s a little gross, but completely fascinating.
More:
8 thoughts on “How artificial eyes are made”
Comments are closed.
ADVERTISEMENT
Support Make:
Join Make: Community Today
Join Make: Community Today
I make something like this using borosilicate glass, only more as a creepy decoration. Using an oxy-propane bench burner, here are the steps I take:
– gather white glass on the end of a clear rod
– push the white ball into a colored frit
– pull a point on a piece of dark color
– jab the point into the iris
– flame cut the dark color
– heat the entire mass, flatten slightly
– encase the front in more clear glass
– heat the eyeball until it is molten and flame polished
– anneal
I scratch built the annealing oven that is used to cool the eyeball from 1200F to room temp, over about eight hours. I use a thermocouple with a decoder IC from SparkFun, connected to an analog input on an Arduino. My Arduino code reads the temp, drives a relay that drives a 220v contactor powering heating coils. The insulation is Kaowool ceramic insulation, with ITC100 and firebrick to hold the Kanthal wire.
Here is a link to some photos of the end result on Etsy:
http://www.etsy.com/listing/53354566/eyeball-with-reduction-color
– James B
amazon diapers coupons
How artificial eyes are made | MAKE
Aoleon The Martian Girl
How artificial eyes are made | MAKE
The Martian
How artificial eyes are made | Make: