Monday – Make a Hologram: Dice, Parallax and Security Features

As part of trying to push past our massive office flood at the end of last year, and trying to restart operations with our latest “Reserve a Hologram” process, we thought we’d have a little fun too. We’re calling it “Make a Hologram Monday” (and yes, it is Tuesday today, but our Monday project extended over a little bit!). We also call this “hologram therapy.”

Additionally, we will be trying a new “Hologram Humpday – Ask a Hologram Expert” where we will take your hologram questions, and have them answered by an MIT-trained holography expert (founder of LitiHolo, Paul Christie). Look for that soon.

But now let’s get back to making some holograms! A handful of dice, some holographic parallax, and suddenly you have the makings of an overt authentication feature sometimes called an Optically Variable Device, but more commonly called… a hologram.

The video of the final hologram is at the end, and it’s pretty sweet being able to “look around” inside the hologram and see all the different sides of the dice! Here’s how we did it.

Making the Hologram

As we are getting things up to operation in the new office location, we are starting to make some test batches of our self-developing hologram film and reestablishing the production for our Hologram Kits and Upgrades. This project used the following:

• Hologram Kit
• Reflection Hologram Upgrade Kit
• 6-sided dice (5)
• Small wooden box from Michael’s

The laser setup from the Hologram Kit sits on top of the Laser Tower from the Reflection Upgrade, and shines the laser light down at an angle onto the Holographic Plate Holder. The small wooden box sat on top of the plate holder area and was positioned under the laser light.

The dice were arranged in the box, checking for good illumination from the laser and also the ability to see around the edges of the dice to different sides.

The 2″x3″ Hologram Film plate sat nicely right on top of the dice and the box. A few set up tips to help get things looking good:

• The hologram film plate needs to rest in a stable position on top of the dice. If it is wobbly or has any movement, it will make your hologram dim.
• Place a blank glass plate of the same size (included in kit) on top and turn off other lights in the room so that you can only see the laser light. This gives you a good visual indicator of the “window” area that the hologram is capturing. If you can’t see part of the objects under just the laser light, it probably won’t show up in your hologram either.
• Use the white card (also in the kit) and place it on top of the glass plate to check how evenly the laser light is illuminating the glass plate. Only the part of the card that is illuminated by the laser AND gets laser light reflected from the objects will for a hologram.

Once everything looks good, it’s time to expose the hologram. Place the shutter in front of the laser to block the laser light, get out a fresh hologram film plate placing it on top of the dice in a stable position, and remove the shutter to begin the exposure. We used an exposure time of about 4 minutes.

One of the amazing and fun things about the LitiHolo self-developing hologram film, is that the hologram is forming and developing as the exposure takes place. Once the exposure is done (film is saturated), the hologram is done, and ready to be viewed immediately. After the exposure is done, you can slowly pick it up and you will see the hologram image from the plate mixing with the image of the objects, like you just removed a clone of the scene.

Hologram parallax and security

Watch the center die! As the hologram is moved around, you can see the top, left, bottom, and then right sides, and read the numbers on each face. This ability to “look around” the object is called parallax, defined as:

par·al·lax/ˈperəˌlaks/noun

1. The effect whereby the position or direction of an object appears to differ when viewed from different positions

Parallax in holograms is often used as an overt security feature on tags and labels to indicate an item’s authenticity. While detecting a knock-off of a branded item or collectible might be difficult just by looking at the item itself, the hologram with its unique parallax features is easy to identify and adds an extra layer of difficulty for forgers. Security holograms have been used in this manner by companies like Visa and Mastercard to protect credit cards, Intel and AMD to authenticate microprocessors, and Nike to prevent forgeries of branded merchandise.

Holograms like the one in this example are simple, and would not fool anyone as a security feature, but it is a great way to understand the principles of holograms, parallax, and how how holograms are being used as security features.

If you’d like to experiment with holograms more, and make some of your own, take a look at our Hologram Kits, Upgrade Kits, and our self-developing Hologram Film.

– LitiHolo