Z
z_ace_xp2
Guest
I hope you can help me nail down the requirements for this. First, the reason to melt sugar is to construct one of these:
http://www.evilmadscientist.com/article.php/candyfab
The problem is that using heated air like he does makes it hard to maintain accuracy, I'm hoping that a beam of light will to the job with more precision.
So I guess it comes down to how many lumens I'll need on the surface to get light to melt the sugar. Thing is I've no knowledge which could help me with this task, so I'm hoping you guys can narrow it down.
I was thinking of using some form of HID, and a Series of Magnifying glasses to focus the beam down to a spot intense enough to heat the sugar. I'm thinking that for this purpose I don't really need to worry about chromic and spheric aberration, as the few tests I've been able to do show this to be a fairly minor effect. Then I was thinking of using an aperature of some kind to cut down on the corona and provide a well defined hotspot.
Now sugar isn't fully opaque, and it's also white, which should make it even harder to heat up then other materials, so I'm hoping some of you with a greater optics/lighting knowledge could tell me whether or not this is even possible with, say a 50w HID.
Thanks for any help you can give.
http://www.evilmadscientist.com/article.php/candyfab
The problem is that using heated air like he does makes it hard to maintain accuracy, I'm hoping that a beam of light will to the job with more precision.
So I guess it comes down to how many lumens I'll need on the surface to get light to melt the sugar. Thing is I've no knowledge which could help me with this task, so I'm hoping you guys can narrow it down.
I was thinking of using some form of HID, and a Series of Magnifying glasses to focus the beam down to a spot intense enough to heat the sugar. I'm thinking that for this purpose I don't really need to worry about chromic and spheric aberration, as the few tests I've been able to do show this to be a fairly minor effect. Then I was thinking of using an aperature of some kind to cut down on the corona and provide a well defined hotspot.
Now sugar isn't fully opaque, and it's also white, which should make it even harder to heat up then other materials, so I'm hoping some of you with a greater optics/lighting knowledge could tell me whether or not this is even possible with, say a 50w HID.
Thanks for any help you can give.
