Yvonne Yu Project 4: Makercase Lamp

 

Concept:

The inspiration my lamp came from a character that I created for a personal project. Outside of his imperfect toy look, his color palette plays a big part (purples and pinks). In my lamp, I wanted to utilize my character to play around with engravings, cuts/negative space. I also wanted to mess around with different materials and how light shows through.

 

Process:

I started my lamp by using Makercase to generate a hexagonal shaped box for my lamp. I then used the Voronoi Grasshopper script to generate six different patterns for each side of my lamp. Once I baked the curves, I went in and adjusted the layers of the curves so there is more variation in the design (engravings, inner cuts, etc.). Since I wanted to utilize different materials, I decided to make another set of inner cuts (right side of the sheet) that would be done on acrylic. In order to engrave the design of my bear, I used the drawing I created and traced it with Interpolate Curves. 

laser cutting curves

ghosted models

I created my 3D model by using PlanarSrf and OffsetSrf to create the wood walls. I did the same for the smaller shapes that would serve as the acrylic pieces. I created the vector engraving by extruding the curves so that they would be visible when I render. I pieced the walls together and then created surfaces along the walls that would act as the paper lining of the lamp. Lastly, I used an Interpolate Curve and Rail to create the wire.

keyshot perspective view

keyshot close-up view

In Keyshot, I used a birch wood material for the plywood. I used a clear plastic for the acrylic and adjusted the color to match the purple shade I used in my lamp. For the paper, I used a cloudy glass material and adjusted the roughness so that the light can shine through without being too transparent. I added in a sphere with an emissive material in the center of my light to mimic the light bulb.

keyshot table view

Materials:

 

assembled lamp close-up view

assembled lamp perspective

After cutting the pieces of my lamp, I used Loctite to glue the acrylic pieces onto my plywood pieces. I then used Loctite to glue the walls together. I marked and cut out six pieces of white paper to tape along the walls of my lamp that would diffuse the light and reduce the intensity. I added in the socket to the bottom of the lamp and screwed the light bulb in. Lastly, I glued on two of the extra inner-cut pieces that would act as handles on the top of my lamp when it needs to be open. Overall, I am satisfied with the lamp and would like to mess around more with bigger engravings and different colors of acrylic in the future.