Jose Diaz - Waffle

When thinking about what to make for the waffle project I knew right away that I wanted to do ceiling light. My parents are in the middle of remodeling their dining room. And I thought this was be a great way to incorporate something I made by making a ceiling light for them.

I wanted to make the waffle structure as simple as I could in order to make it as big as the 2’x4’ laser bed would let me. So I avoided making small pieces that would later take up space on the plywood I was using. So I created a truncated octagonal pyramid that was about a 1 ½ ‘high and 1’ wide. Then I created a cylinder that was 5” in diameter and used it to punch a hole through the center using the Boolean difference feature in order to provide a way to change the light bulb. For the horizontal pieces I used the contour command to slice those sections. And then the section command to create a radial slice for the vertical pieces. Then I used the waffle and unroll scripts to lay the pieces out for cutting. Then I went back and cleaned up my edges so that my slots where cut cleanly.

Once my waffle structure was cut I stained the birch plywood I used a dark brown so that it matched the edges of the pieces and it hid the burn marks on the underside of the wood. After that I used satin polyurethane to give it a matte almost rough look to it. Once dry I put the lamp together and attached a ceiling light kit to the smaller side of it and secured it with liquid nails, I wanted to make sure it didn’t fall apart.