Yr 8 Lamp project

Design Brief

Lighting can be used to create a mood, illuminate a dark area, ‘decorate’ a room with patterns of light, and can offer reassurance to young children to help them feel safe at night or to help them to fall asleep.

You are required to Design and Make a mood lamp to be used in a specific room (of your choice), in a house or boarding house or you can design it as a gift for someone you know who would like a mood lamp.

To improve your design understanding you will consider designing the lamp for someone else. Whoever you choose to design for is called the 'User Group'.

Design Restrictions

Restrictions are set so that solving the design problem is made easier for you and that you all work using the same constraints. The format of the lamp you will be making is made up of 2 main elements - a base and a shade. Examples of lamps made by year 8 students, following this format can be seen at the bottom of this page.

The materials that you will be using to manufacture your lamp base are Acrylic, Light Gathering Acrylic, and a choice of a light or dark Hardwood. The base comprises of 4 layers and you must prioritise your base design to have a creative shape that makes use of the 4 layers of material.
The finish of your Lamp must be of the highest quality, showing off the beautiful wood grain and the polished edges of the Acrylic. It is this material combination that can look stunning if ‘finished’ well.
You must join (solder) the electronic components provided to make a working Lamp circuit. The circuit must fit in the cavity shape shown in the middle of the drawing below.
You can make the Lamp ‘Shade’ using any material or manufacturing process available to you in the DT department this can include laser cutting and 3D Printing but must not exceed 3 seperate pieces.
Your Lamp must have no sharp edges.
Your Lamp must not exceed the dimensions (sizes) given. These are shown in the drawings.

User Group Mindmap

In this activity I decided the themes, colours, aesthetics and locations of my lamp based on my user group (girls age 12 to 15) I choose this specific age group because I do relate to it which makes the research process easier. This mindmap is crucial to the design phase of this lamp.

Inspiration Board

In this activity I have gathered many pictures of things relevant to the mindmap including colour schemes, aesthetics and topics that could inspire me while designing.

Electronic circuit Diagram

This activity consist of learning how circuits work, how to draw them and how the lamp functions.

We have learned how to draw the different symbols for each components needed..

Cell (battery)

Switch (open switch)

Led

Variable Resistor (potentiometer)

USB cable for Strip LED

Strip LED

Triangle Led

Protentiometer

Toggle switch

USB cable for triangle LED

Cell (battery)

LED

Design Ideas

We started off with a template then we added sketches coming straight out of our minds. We then use ghost lines by drawing very lightly on the paper so we can erase easily for an easier process.

Here are some close up shots of the unfinished work. We fine line the outer line thicker than the innerline for the design to pop up.

When we draw designs ideas we will put annotations in to inform the reader.

As this is shown half rendered we fineline before putting colour in.

Client Interview

I have asked three of my classmates who fit into my target audience about my design ides. and the pros and cons of them. Then I created a poster on Goodnotes to show what they have said about the designs. Which would help improve the design or which designs I should develop further.

Final Design

We sketched crates using the drawing assist option to help with the perspective of the 3D view utilizing what the app has offered us.

This is the final design with the changes that we made from our client interviews. We made this in an app called procreate.

Then we fine lined everything inthin pen and thick for the outer sides to mimic paper designs ready to fill the colour in.

When we render our designs we go from darker to lighter from the edges to show that the design is a 3 dimensional object.

These are the final design where I will use it to help me with my CAD Cam design on a website called onshape.

CAD Cam

Here are a couple photos of my finish CAD Cam of my design.

This is the 3D perspective of my lamp design seen in onshape.

(There were some major adjustments made, making the lamp shade bigger and moving the led hole.)

Manufacture

In this photo I cut out the template of my design base to stick onto the piece of wood for accurate measurements.

In this picture I have a pile of my acrylic layers that have been cut out based on the pdfs I sent. I also requested specific colours.

After the lightshade has been 3D printed the results turn out a lot smaller than expected.

So I went to do some adjustments to make it turn out like how I wanted.

Adjustments

These are new parts of the lamp that has been remade or re printed based on new design adjustments.

These are the new acrylic layers that has been recut and adjusted for the new position of the lamp shade.

This is the new improved lampshade with a bigger base at the bottom so it is able to stand.

This is the new lamp shade compared to the old one.

Sanding and manufacturing pieces

These are parts that I've cut out and sanded to form the lamp. Starting with the base.

In this picture I used the (saw) to cut out the cavity of the base after I drilled the hole for the tiny saw to insert in.

I also cut out the design of the base with the same machine.

I made adjustments on the side as I realised that there might not be enough space and it is abit thin.

Then I manually sanded the inside and did some touch ups with details that the machine wasn't able to reach.

This is the product from the sanding machine plus the circuit hole, cut from the inside.

I ended up using a sanding machine to help smooth out the sides.

In this picture I used a tool to sand the bottom bits and the top to make it smooth and flat for the acrylics to be stuck on.

I then filed the sides to smoothen it for a nicer finish. Wet and dry paper used on the acrylics and sand paper used on the wood.

Gluing

I officially glued the acrylics to the wood.

In this picture clamps were used to hold the glue in place as it dries.

While I waited for the glue to dry I started airbrushing my discs.

First I stuck my acrylics on to the wood with double sided tape and eventually stuck it together with uhu glue.

Airbrushing

These parts were completed as I waited for the glue to dry.

I manually sanded the main piece (made from 3d printed resin) with wet and dry paper till it has a plastic feel. Some marks were left from the 3d printer and I was unable to get the detailed or small spaces.

Before I can start the airbrushing process. I started by masking the bits that are going to have a different colour, in this case the pink.

In this photo I finished masking the top disc.

Before I start airbrushing, I had to mix the colours that I wanted.

The green didn't act as planned so I mixed yellow and blue together to achieve green, however I added a bit more blue to the mix for a cool toned green for the final product.

Then for the second disc on top I airbrushed to a redish pink colour to contrast with the green at the bottom. I then masked the bottom layer to protect the pink going onto the green.

I then sanded the colours abit to create a retro/ vintage type of effect that could be seen when the light shines onto it.

Assembling

In these two pictures I sanded the black acrylic on top to create a matte black to contrast with the polished blue acrylic underneath.

I then put the circuit on the inside and screwed in the bottom layer.

This is how it looks after assembling all the pieces together.

The translucent piece of arcylic is to close of the hole in the middle and let the light shine through it.

An extra step was made to place the cable in the correct place. The wood base layer need to have a long small hole the width of the cable from the cavity to outside so it need to be sanded down last minute.

The last step was to apply polish to the wood to give a little colour and shine.

Final Product

This is the final product of this project. These pictures is how it looks like with the lamp on and the lights off.

In the end I felt like improvements could've been made with the lamps such as overall planning, but in the end I am happy with my finished work.

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