Project 1: The Laser Cutter

Brainstorming and Ideation

My name is Sydney Smith and I am a visual arts major who focuses primarily on sculptural works. I began school as a pre-engineering student so I love to explore with structures and physics. While I want to explore how I can use the laser cutter to make pieces of visual art in the future I am also fascinated by the tools ability to make identical pieces and how that can be used in furniture making. I have always wanted to make furniture of something functional for my home but have never been confident in my woodworking or welding skills to go for it! My ideas for this project come are a few functional objects or pieces that my apartment is lacking and I have never found the perfect thing to buy or had the guts to make.

Idea 1: Lamp Shade

This is a sketch of how the shade would be constructed. I want to challenge myself to create a shade that does not need to be assembled with glue and can simply exist as a sculptural “puzzle”.

My first idea is to create a lamp shade for a pendant lightbulb I got from ikea last year. I bought the light bulb knowing I would need to get a lamp shade eventually, but thought maybe I could make one. A year later, and I still have no lamp shade.

For this lamp shade, I want it to be organic yet modern. I have seen these types of lampshades that don’t really block the light, but instead make the light kinda like a sculpture.

All of the lamps that I took inspiration from are very similar, but I am interested in using a different material than wood, possibly using acrylic to allow the light through.

Idea 2: Living Room Side Table

Side view of table which is constructed with multiple laser cut “frames” that support the table top. I find this concept interesting because the top can be a flat “normal” table top but the lower shelf is a series of slats.

As I mentioned, I have always wanted to make my own piece of furniture, but have not felt confident in my woodworking skills to make anything that has the accuracy to be strong and study. With laser cutting and digital fabrication, I will be able to cut pieces to their exact required measurements and hopefully be able to create a perfect side table for my living room.

Like my lamp shade, I would love to try to assemble the table without nails, screws or glue.

This chair is inspiration for the silhouette style framed legs with multiple layers.

I like the use of horizontal slats in this side table.

Idea 3: Nautical Wave Wine Rack for my parents

This sketch shows a single tiered drawing of a wine rack that looks like waves. I am thinking about possibly expanding and making it two levels to hold six bottles instead of just 3.

My final idea is to create a functional piece for my parents house. Both of my parents love wine and now that they are empty nesters on a lake they spend their nice evenings together on the boat or in the yard. However, they don’t have a place to store the wine they have at home, it simply sits on the counter.

I want to make this wine rack for them that gives them a place to store their wine and also ties in with the nautical decor of our house.

The idea was inspired by this laser cut six pack holder for beer that I saw online.

And these style of wire wine racks.

Initial File Work

(Screenshots of work are currently in 1pt stroke and will be changed to 0.001 before sending the file to the laser cutter)

I decided to move forward with my first idea of building a lamp shade that can be “flat packed,” in other words it does not need glue or nails to hold it together, but instead is more like a puzzle.

I have three components of my lamp shade that I have been working on, the upper support circle, lower support circle and the lamp shade ‘leaves’. To construct the shade, the upper support circle will sit just above the light bulb and the leaves will then be notched into this circle. For two points of support, I included a lower supporting ring with notches as well.

Upper Support Circle

The small ring that is specified in the dimentions is the ring that stablizes right above the actual lightbulb. The circle then extends outwards to create a ring with a larger radial different for the leaves to notch into.

I chose to have a sequence of rings for this upper support circle because I want to be cautious about the overall weight of this lamp shade, but also think that allowing some light to go upward through the holes will be nice.

Lower Support Circle

This circle is similar to the outer ring of the upper circle. But instead of sitting on the light bulb, it is both holding and being held by the shade leaves.

This is how I plan to actually send the file to the laser cutter. By embedding the upper support circle into the lower, I can optimize the material I choose to use.

Shade “Leaves”

The lamp shade leaves were the most challenging part for me mostly because I had trouble getting one side of the curve to match or be parallel to the part I had already done.

In total there will be 12 leaves around the circles. Again I chose to cut out from each leaf to minimize the total weight. But I really enjoy the element of almost a two layer shade once these would be constructed.

Notches

The notches in the shade leaves are each 0.25 inches tall in order to fit the quarter inch thick support circles in them. The depth of the notches in the leaves is 0.75 inches. This is because I wanted optimal stability, so a larger depth will help with that. On the circles themselves, and ring that contains notches has a radius of 1 inch. The notch depth and width are both 0.25 inches. Therefore when a leaf is fully notched into the support circle, the leaf will line up with the inner cut of the circle.

Techniques

Offset Paths

I learned how to offset curves in illustrator in order to create the hole in the bottom portion of the leaves. One I offset the outer edge of the curve inward (using a negative offset value) I was then able to delete anchor points from the upper portion to result in the shape shown above.

Smart Guides

I also utilized smart guides. By a very quick search of how to be more accurate in dimensions and measurements in illustrator I was able to use smart guides to ensure I was centered or inline with a shape/path. The main reason I utilized smart guides is because I was able to hover over an anchor point on my shade leaves and see the exact position. This gave me the capability to determine the necessary radial difference between the upper support circle and lower support circle without having the redesign the leaf with specific measurements.

Final File Work

I completed a test cut for my file with cardboard, but since the cardboard was only 0.162" thick instead of the 0.25" I originally made my file for I had to make an iteration of the file for the thickness of the cardboard. The test turned out great, all the notches lined up great! The one thing I tweaked before creating my final file was the diameter of the smallest circle that sits over the light bulb. It was a bit wobbly at 2.1" so I made it 2".

Cardboard lampshade test in my apartment

I kept both the file for 0.25" thick material and the 0.162" material. I found (since the 1/4 inch MDF is actually 0.252" thick) that if the file work has the notches measured to be 0.002" less than the thickness of the material that accounts for the thickness of the laser. So in the 0.162" file the notches are 0.16" wide and in the 0.252" file the notches are 0.25" wide.

0.162" File Work

0.252" File Work

Final Assembly

I chose to cut the final lamp shade out of 0.195 inch plywood because it was light enough to be installed in the current hook I have in my ceiling for the light and it would allow for a visible wood grain finish, which I like.

Staining and Finishing

Coming out of the laser, each piece had some smoke on the back side. To ensure this did not show up after staining I wiped down both sides of each piece with some isopropyl rubbing alcohol. This got rid of that smoke and also cleaned each piece well to prepare for staining.

I decided to go with a dark wood stain to finish this piece. I love how beautiful walnut is, so with Varathane’s Dark Walnut wood stain I hoped to get a similar look out of some less expensive and lighter plywood. I also wanted to achieve a spin off of the Ikea “Black-Brown” finish because the light itself is from there.

Here the pieces are after being stained. Each side got two coats of the stain.

I struggled with what to finish the pieces with and am not sure if I went in the right direction. I waited 24 hours for the stain to fully set and then applied a water based top coat from General Finishes. I am not at all experienced with woodworking and wanted to try to seal the pieces to prevent future warping from heat or moisture because the lamp shade will be over my stove. It did not turn out horrible, the top coat just seemed to run and was not as clean as the stain alone looked. If anyone has experience working with wood I am open to suggestions of what to finish with in the future!

Installation

I was very cautious about making sure stain and top coat did not puddle in the notches of each piece, and I actually feel like the tiny bit that is there made the lamp shade fit together more snug!

Once the top coat was dry, I was able to connect each leaf to the two supporting circles one at a time. Once all 12 of the leaves were on I was able to pull the lightbulb cord through both circles and then hang the light from the hook in my kitchen ceiling.

Here is the lampshade up in my apartment

I really like how it looks from beneath.

I am very pleased with how the lampshade turned out. It provides a very interesting light fixture without shading much if not any of the light. My dad thinks I need to get one of those old time-y “Edison” light bulb.

I also took some pictures of my lamp inside my studio space because it has better lighting which allows for a better image of the color of the pieces.