Lamp
An experimental art piece, which you could call a lamp
Supplies
- WS2811 LED string
- Arduino uno
- Material scraps
- 38cm by 61cm black mdf
- Drill (12mm)
Facade
- In an Adobe Illustrator file, create numerous rectangular shapes of different sizes and dimensions
- Export this file as a dxf file
- Gather a bunch of different materials, I stuck to black acrylic, white acrylic, wood and clear acrylic
- Import the dxf file to the lasercutter program
- Grab one of the materials, measure it and create a rectangle of those exact dimensions. From the imported file use a couple of shapes to fill up the rectangle
- Delete the other imported shapes
- Change the settings of the laser cutter to match the material you have
- Cut! Repeat steps 4-7 until you have a lot of rectangular shapes
Downloads
Box
- In an Adobe Illustrator file, create a flat lay of a box, adding little “teeth”, which have the same height as the material thickness is, on each side that can interlock with the connecting side.
- Export this file as a dxf file. Import it in the lasercut program. Change the settings of the laser cutter to match the material you have and cut.
- Glue the box together
Downloads
Assembly
- Using a larger piece of material as a backing, I used black mdf which was roughly 60 by 38, to create a layout for the shapes, working in multiple layers, at least two. Take a picture of the layout
- Glue the pieces that directly touch the backing on the backing
- Mark a place where the box will go
- Using the picture of the layout as a guide, drill 30-40 (for a string of 50) holes in the backing that will be covered by the layers that will go on top. Do not drill in the spot of the box
- Glue the rest of the pieces, like the reference picture taken, onto the backing
Electronics
- Write a program to control the lights
- Upload the program onto the Arduino
- Connect the Arduino and LEDs and test the program out with a multimeter, see circuit diagram
- If it works, solder the circuit as such
- Add the lights to the drilled holes
- Add the circuit and Arduino into the box and glue to box onto the backing