Will o' the wispahedron

-

Textured Transluscent Plastic is a very curious material.  With a light behind it, the material seems to glow as a smoky monsoon of diffuse radiance.  A laser through it will diffract into chaos, but a laser through two layered sheets will instead spread into constellations.

But how to build a lamp of it?


Originally, I wanted to see if I could get the lamp to float, perhaps held aloft in a fan, or somehow using magnets.  Ultimately, the imperfections in construction made these plans impossible; a fan will not hold it up much better than it would hold up a cheesecloth.

That said, the construction is hours away from a semi-permanent home above my bed.

Behold, a 3-photo tour-de-force of its construction:


 Parts used:

  1. 1 yard of textured transluscent plastic
  2. Clear tape
  3. Garage lamp (deconstructed)
  4. Grate from a kitchen strainer
  5. Clamp to hold the lamp parts, and rest the strainer atop it

Ideas for improvement:
  1. Stronger tape and more precisely cut parts would help it keep its shape better
  2. A metal frame would give the object some solidity, though it would make fan-floating plans nearly impossible
  3. A helium balloon within it might still be capable of making the lamp weightless
  4. Rather than using a light bulb, a laser mounted to a small fan on the inside would create a really interesting strobe-like effect.  Unfortunately, there were issues with all fans I tested this idea on, but I'm sure it's possible.  Even better if you could get a laser rotating through multiple spatial dimensions.
  5. There are far more interesting 3-D geometric shapes one could build.
Can someone say "rhomboidodecahedron"?  Because I can't...

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Learn about Milling: The "Inside Corner" Problem

-
Image
Coming to a CNC mill from a laser cutter, it is easy to get tripped up by the physical size of the bit when making designs. Any time you want to cut out an inside angle, you need to keep in mind that you can't reach all the way into an inside angle with a rounded bit. This comes up frequently when making furniture or any type of joinery; this post was inspired by the awesome examples of CNC joinery from this Make magazine post . Let's dive into the problem with inside corners and illustrate strategies to fix it. The problem obviously depends on the size of your bit (let's call the bit radius R). An easy way to reduce the impact of this problem without modifying your design is to simply use a smaller bit. A laser cutter suffers from this only slightly because the 'bit size' is a tiny beam of light! Fixing the inside corner problem You can modify your design to compensate for this problem. There are actually several ways to cover the red area shown abo
Read more

3D carving 101: Understanding Bits

-
Image
Choosing the right 3D carving bit for the job at hand can be an extremely important factor in whether a project comes out amazingly, alright, or not at all. Combine that with having more choices of bits than materials, and choosing the right bit can be quite a difficult task. However, by answering a simple set of questions, you can greatly simplify your choice of bit. Here are the things you need to ask: What material am I cutting? What is my machine capable of? What shape am I cutting? Let’s quickly go through each of these and what they mean. What material am I cutting? Your material is one of the most important single factors in choosing a bit. Materials have a lot of properties that matter both for your design and cutting (hardness, density, size) as well as just for cutting (how does it chip? melting point, thermal conductivity). For any combination of these properties, one thing remains constant: your bit must be sharp. A dull bit will always cut
Read more

Shapeoko Upgrade - Quiet Cut Spindle with gShield and Relay

-
Image
One of the best upgrades for the Shapeoko is to use a spindle instead of the rotary tool that many start with. The 300 Watt Quiet Cut Spindle from Inventables works great with the Shapeoko desktop CNC. It is a great upgrade for many other DIY CNC router designs as well. To make your life a little easier, we've compiled all the parts necessary for this upgrade into a single project that can be purchased here . The Quiet Cut Spindle has several features that make it perfect for this application. very quiet, compared to the rotary tool, you barely hear it running great tool holding, with a industry standard ER11-A collet included additional collets available air cooled compact and light weight affordable Hooking it up to work with the gShield (previously known as grblShield) on the Shapeoko is a pretty simple procedure that only requires a few more items, and most people should be able to perform the upgrade in a few hours. When the gShield is hooked up correctly th
Read more