Paris Lopez - Project 1 - MakerCase Lamp

 

 

 

    For my lamp project, I was inspired by the upcoming Halloween season to create something with a  dark and sinister feel, but also something that one could have out in their own house year round. So I avoided the usual ghouls and pumpkins, and orange colors of that season. Instead for the patterns and design I looked at gothic architecture and reflected some of that in the lamp. I also thought about vampires and loosely used the imagery(like crosses, stakes, and bats) that comes to with them my pattern.

 

 

 

 

    For the design I imported my MakerCase protoype into Rhino to create additional straight lines and arches, dividing them into layers for laser cutting, and extracting them to create a solid 3d model. After creating the design in Rhino, I exported the model to Keyshot where I played around with the materials to get an idea of the look I was going for. In the end I settled for a slightly glossy red and black paint, to give it an elegant feel. I rendered out several images with varying background brightness to test out how the lamp would look while on and off.

    After getting it laser cut, I put primer on the MDF to prepare it for painting, which inspired me to leave some faces white, as the contrast of red white and black was very pleasing to me. I also improvised on the lightbulb choice since the E12 "Vintage Edison Lightbulb" was not what I looking for while shopping, but loved the look immediately. I spray painted the faces and assembled them by fitting them together and then glued them by using Loctite. I did the same for the candelabra socket and cord.

    There were some issues like having to repaint several times, making a few parts too thin, and the lack of proper shapes of the shadows of the lamp once I turned it on, since I was expecting them to be crisp and impressive. But overall I was pretty satisfied, and enjoyed the process of making my first laser cut project ever!