Whale lamp: Cutting the Acrylic
Part 2 in a series on creating the whale lamp..
I’ve still not fully developed the name for my new lamp, so for now I’ll just call it my “whale lamp.” Here are a few of the steps I completed at Techshop yesterday.
Here you can see the light channel in the center of the lamp that starts at the base of the lamp (in the water) and travels up into the whale and back down to the other end of the water-base. I estimate this will consume a full meter of a NeoPixel strip.
Here’s the whale with the two different layers of splash out beside it.
Here is a 3D view of the water where the whale tail and splash will fit.
Here are the six plates used for the whale, as you can see only one will have any etching on it.
I’m not sure what will look best when painting the splash because it depends on how the lights hit it. So, I cut extra and the played with the process.
I used 4 colors of spray paint (aqua, baby, midnight and white). My favorite look (before seeing it with lights) comes from spraying up and letting droplets splash down on the acrylic.
After I got all the other parts cut I was able to focus on the base. Here I’m cutting the acrylic on the Universal laser cutter at Techshop.
After 10 hours of cutting, painting and some re=designing all the parts are cut. I’ll do the assembly at home. The project consumed 6 sheets of 24″ x 18″ acrylic.