Making it

I first cut the top part of the light out of MDF wood but I didn't like the look of it, I thought it looked cheep and did not work well with the European beech so I disdained to laser cut it again and this time use pine as it had a proper grain so was more ascetically pealing, I liked the colour that the burns made when it cut the wood, I felt it would give a good contrast to colour of the beech so I brought a dark stain to colour the pine.

I finalised on designing the lamp to be a hanging lamp as it would look more complete hanging up and then the reifications of the light can hit a wider surface.

I had trouble choosing what to put inside the top to refract the light i tried a few different things, I first tried clear plastic and it worked ok you could see the out line of the shapes cut in the plastic but it did not refract the light, so then I tried glass got thin rounded glass hoping that since the glass was rounded it would course the light to bend off at different angles but yet again all you could see was the shapes of the glass, I think that one of the reasons I was having this problem was because I had frosted the plastic cover to much so light could be refracted out but I didn't want the glass/plastic to be seen

glass

Plastic

• In the end I had to go with coloured plastic as it showed the changing of light but it wasn't my be decision as i felt it looked cheep and not to visually pleasing but it showed my concept the best.

I found when wiring this up that wiring is not my strong point in design and found it extremely difficult to do, getting solder everywhere, burning my fingers and spending hours trying to get a simple series circuit to work. I felt to show that it was meant to be hung up I should put a plug to it, it is purely decoration and is not set up to any part of the circuit.

modifying the deign

I changed the design of the lighting device taking out the neck and stand and just focusing on the just the head. I felt that it was going to be to hard to pull of the lamp well with the neck and stand as they had a high chance of not looking ascetically pleasing and looking out of place. I also felt it lost focus from the head, it would be hard for the user to figure out how to use it properly if there was to many parts to it. I then looked at different way to have the whole light all inclosed with in the one lathed wood;

 I want a design that is simple, easy to hold, can hold the weight of the lighting fixtures and looks ascetically pleasing. some my designs I wanted to resumable an old fashioned kaleidoscope and other designs I wanted it to look modern and organic.

This is the design I finalised on I felt it was simple and organic with its soft rounded edges it was would be quite easy to grasp if needed to. on the top you can rotate it so that you can move around the glass inside. the LED strip lighting will rap round the inside of the top of the lamp and the battery will be in the thiner part and the switch will be at the bottom.

I felt to make the top part the rotates and also the bottom part to cover the hole and to make the switch the easiest way to make them will be to laser cut the pieces so the will be all the exact size and can guarantee that the top will spin.

The illustrator file of my laser cutting

some of my laser cut pieces after they were sanded 

I then made the out side of the lamp on the lathe focusing on the shape I had decided, I found it hard to round the edges and found my self cutting in at a strait angle not rounded but after a bit of practice I got the hang of it and managed to make it in the end and was quite proud of the out come of it as I was smooth and really easy to hold.

finished before cutting it off.

All polished up.

Inside lathe

I started making my lamp but lathing the inside of the lampshade with a 20mm diameter hole going all of the way through the lamp and it widening to 80mm diameter at the entrance I felt that that gave enough space for the light to be emitted through and also enough wood left to make sure the wood is strong enough and wont brake. It is made out of European Beech.