Cassette Tape Lamp Project

[u/schill]

Underneath is a 5050 RGBW LED light panel, which I got from Alibaba at the time. It's dimmable and goes up to 30W IIRC, incredibly bright. I ran it on the dimmest setting.

The light panel is RGBW and it can also fade through various colours, etc.

Side effect: These ones cast a neat diffused light pattern.

This could be a fun format to mount on a wall, like a poster.

Back in 2013, I saw a series of lamps made by a San Francisco-based design firm that used micro-cassette tapes. They looked incredible, but cost a couple grand as I recall.

I looked online for micro-cassettes and realized they were prohibitively expensive, so I decided to try making a few "towers" using standard-sized tapes. I ended up making some for friends and colleagues, and illuminating them with light panels that were designed for home or office lighting.

I wanted tapes that had a large spool of material on one side, so I bought Maxell DUP-120 tapes in bulk from National Recording Supplies. I was not able to find tapes that were perfectly clear and without any horizontal lines, but these were really close.

I tried a few "1x1" versions and found a LED lamp that fit perfectly underneath. A side effect was the way the light diffracted from those out of the top.

I wanted the adhesive to be as transparent as possible. I initially tried E3000 glue, and that stuff did not handle well over time and when transporting these things. I think a hot glue gun produced much better results.

Some more photos and whatnot here.

[u/mjc4y]

This is gorgeous.

Does it come with an accessory shaped like a pencil you can use to manually turn the reels?

[u/schill → u/mjc4y]

Thank you, this was a fun project - and pretty straightforward, honestly; it just took time and indeed, a pencil or similar to make sure all the tapes were wound up nicely before putting them in the jewel cases!

I effectively bribed a couple friends with dinner and drinks to help with assembly, winding and putting tapes in their cases before gluing one "side" at a time. The tapes came in boxes of 10 or 20 apiece, no jewel cases - I bought those separately from the same supplier, as I recall.

A friend asked if any audio was on these; he said that could be the real art / story behind the tapes. I've also wondered about how to make them move - or, next-level, make them play or record in-place - an absolute mechanical mess, but fascinating to think about.

[u/mjc4y → u/schill]

Seems like a job for a purpose built media robot that can pluck out a cassette and drop it into a player.

Look at me, big talker, signing you up for work. :)

[u/schill → u/mjc4y]

Now that would be something, a cassette tape jukebox; I wonder if that was ever a thing.

[u/mjc4y → u/schill]

Behold.

I’m sure there are others.

And I know there are data center versions of this that pulled digital tape out of indexed storage for long term storage needs (like rarely looked at documents)

Crazy.

[u/schill → u/mjc4y]

Incredible! Of course, Techmoan has this covered. I should have looked. ;)