project 4: lighting engines
--
november 11, 2020
For this project, I’ve been assigned to make a lighting engine that would be best suited to working on a project at a desk. We’re supposed to use paper to construct our engines. I knew I would want to try different weights of paper, so my parents mailed me one sheet each of 20lb, 65lb, 70lb, 80lb, and 140lb paper as well as a sheet of vellum. After testing them all out with my lightbulb and socket, I think the 65lb is the right weight (at least for the lampshade part of the engine). It’s flexible enough that I can curve it around the lightbulb, but also heavy enough that it directs the light in a useful way.
I also did some research about desk lamp design. While many of the ones I found seemed to be more gimmicky — designed in a quirky or unique way to be fun and different, rather than designed for functionality — I did notice some common trends and themes amongst the more practical lamps I found. They all tend to have the lightbulb elevated, casting light downward onto the workspace. They also have adjustable heights and angles that the lightbulb can have, so that the user can tweak the lamp to shine just right on whatever they’re working on.
Desks are really interesting in that the way they are lit is different from virtually anything else in a household. Other places just need enough light to see, but at a desk, your lamp needs to be bright enough to be able to work and read under. When working on a project, it’s vital to have enough light, and also that it’s coming from the right angle. If the light source is in the wrong place, it can cast nasty shadows that prevent you from seeing your work, or it can be ineffective. And, for different kinds of projects, it can be helpful to have different angles of light. For this reason, most desk lamps tend to be extremely adjustable. For example, the one I use on my desk at home has a gooseneck system — the entire neck of the lamp is basically just one big bendable tube that will stay however I move it.
Desk lighting also tends to be better if it’s directional, like a theater spotlight, rather than ambient or general like any standard ceiling light. When lighting is directional, it’s easier to highlight exactly what you need to see, and it also keeps the light more intense where you need it. This means I’ll need to find a way to point/direct the light with the paper I’m using to construct the lighting engine.
I think it’s probably going to be pretty difficult to make a supporting arm like that out of paper. I’ll certainly need paper of a pretty heavy weight in order to be strong enough to hold up the lightbulb fixture. I think in terms of adjustment of the head, I might end up doing something like the adjustment on a pool chair. It essentially has a very rigid stem coming out of the adjustable part. This stem has ridges on it, and the base has a pole or other sort of crosswise piece that catches on the ridges. This way, the user can adjust the angle. I might try emulating something like that with my lamp.
I’m not sure what I’m going to do in order to make the lamp height adjustable. That would certainly be a nice feature to have, but it’ll require a lot of brainstorming and experimenting.
My takeaways so far are that I’ll probably need at least two different weights of paper: a more solid one for the base of the engine, that will hold up the lightbulb, and another lighter one to direct and shield the light. I’ll need to experiment with many different ways to adjust both the head and neck of the lamp.
november 12, 2020
Sitting at a desk to work feels really different, depending on what you’re sitting down to work on. If it’s a personal project that you’re really passionate about, then it can feel exhilarating and invigorating. Even if you’re working on something for someone else, if you’re in a productive mood or the right headspace, it can feel hopeful and happy — like good things are on the horizon. But if you’re doing work you have to do rather than work you want to do, then it feels mundane and almost painful. For example, sitting down at a desk to draw for fun feels extremely different than sitting down at a desk to do calculus homework. The former is relaxing and peaceful, while the latter is difficult and frustrating. Hopefully my lighting engine can enhance positive feelings and boost negative ones.
november 14, 2020
Today I made a sketch model of my project. I haven’t quite gotten to the adjustable mechanisms, but I was able to make a lamp that stands on its own and casts good light for reading, writing, and working! It’s also not necessarily… pretty… yet, but now that I have the basics down, I can work on tweaking the appearance and mechanisms. (Plus, if we’re allowed to use wire or other supplies, that would make everything much easier. I’ll have to ask about that next week.)
I didn’t really have a plan when I started today. I just wanted to figure out how to use paper to support the lightbulb’s weight, and then how to direct the light in a helpful way. I started by taking a large sheet of pretty heavy paper (thanks Chelsea Liu for the hand-me-down paper!) and rolling it up to make a tube. I taped it together so it wouldn’t unravel and stood it up on one end. It’s about 2 or 2.5 inches in diameter. I then cut out a 6x6 inch piece of foam core and taped the tube on top of it, using the foam core as a base to support the tube, which would become the neck of the lamp.
I held up the lightbulb and socket towards the top of the tube just to see what kind of angle it would need to be at. It ended up working well to put my finger across the top of the tube, underneath the cord, so I folded up and taped a piece of cardstock to be roughly the same size and shape as my finger and taped it across the top of the tube. I did the same thing with another piece of cardstock to sit on the corner edge of the tube, giving a place to rest to the part that connects the socket and the cord.
I also realized that the lightbulb would need some kind of support underneath it to keep it at a better working angle (rather than just hanging straight down), so I used another rolled up piece of cardstock to make a stand. It’s kind of similar to a picture frame stand.
Then I got to work on the lampshade part of the lighting engine. I took a piece of cardstock and rolled it around the socket (with the lightbulb in it), forming most of a cone shape. The paper wasn’t big enough to go all the way around towards the end. I held it in place and made sure I could still take the lightbulb out and put it back in, and then taped it at that angle. I added a second piece of cardstock to cover the area of the cone that couldn’t be met by the first piece and taped the entire unit together, then taped it to the socket.
I attached the lightbulb and lampshade to the base and neck I had previously made. It seemed to work pretty well!
But I realized that the cone was too long, and the way the end of it was cut created an odd angle and didn’t provide the best light. So I took it back off and trimmed the cone down, leaving it shorter at the bottom so that more light can hit the desk.
This turned out pretty well! I’ve actually been using it to light up my desk in studio the whole time I’ve been writing this post and it’s been working well. In my next iterations I want to work on making it look nicer (maybe I can make the lampshade out of one piece of larger cardstock and figure out how to make the tape less visible) as well as making it adjustable.
november 18, 2020
For today, I mainly explored the questions “How can I make my lighting engine adjustable, in different senses of the word?” and “How can I use wire to help improve the structure or other aspects of my engines?”
Some criteria for a desk project lighting source that I think are important are:
- Not hanging — it’s nice to be able to move a desk lamp around on the table to change the lighting.
- The lighting should be directional, but not so harsh that it forms a hard circle of light on the desk.
- It should be adjustable in some sense — different aspects of a project may require different types or angles of light.
- It should be pleasant to be around, but not attention seeking. It’s not meant to be a focus point, but it shouldn’t be ugly, since it sits in plain sight all the time.
With these things in mind, I created four sketch models. They don’t all meet every one of my criteria, but they were all good to make because I learned more about the materials and how they work together.
The first two models I made just popped into my head when Steve mentioned to our breakout room yesterday that we should try to create lighting engines that aren’t made of two distinct parts (a lampshade and a stand), but instead one cohesive unit. First, I created this mushroom-shaped lamp (reusing the cone from my previous sketch model). I took a large sheet of paper and cut a circle out of it, then cut a slit from the edge all the way to the center. I overlapped it slightly to create a cone shape. I used some wire to create a little frame that would sit atop the base cone and provide something for the top to sit on. It’s basically just two loops connected by wire. The bottom loop stays on top of the bottom cone without any adhesives because of gravity, but I had to tape the top cone to the wire frame to keep it from sliding off.
Ideally, I would have used a heavier weight for the top part, but I didn’t have any paper that was that large. I don’t think I’m going to continue on with this idea as it doesn’t really fit my prompt very well, but it was definitely helpful in terms of figuring out how to use the wire in conjunction with the paper. (I bought 16-gauge wire from the art store, since I needed it for some of my other ideas.)
The second idea that just popped into my head is kind of difficult to explain. Essentially, it’s a ring with wire inside, so you can bend it open or closed — kind of like a jump ring. The lightbulb goes through a hole in the ring, so it travels with the paper as it bends.
Hopefully these photos convey what I’m trying to say better. When the ring is unfurled, the light bounces off the back “wall” of the ring and provides nice, soft light to work under. When it’s closed, the light reflects off of all the sides and becomes more directional (you can see the reflection on my cutting mat), which might be more helpful for specific details.
I created this by cutting two matching strips of pretty heavy paper, and then 3 lengths of wire that were the same length as the paper. I lined up the wire atop one piece of paper and taped it down.
At first, I used the tape lengthwise, but I ran into issues trying to bend the piece with the tape like that. So I tore it into smaller pieces and went crosswise, which seemed to fix the issue. I then measured out where I wanted the hole for the socket to go and marked it with a pencil. I snipped out the center piece of wire just in that little spot. Once the wire was completely taped to one strip of paper, I took small pieces of tape and slid them sticky side up between the paper and the wire. Then I could just place the other piece of paper on top and squeeze them together, and there wouldn’t be any tape on the outside! I did end up adding strips of tape to either end of the entire piece just to secure it, though.
I traced the socket onto the strip and cut a hole through both pieces of paper. It’s just the right size for the socket to fit through, but not so big that it needs to be attached with tape or glue or anything.
I cut out a little square of foamcore and attached the wire/paper contraption to it with hot glue to create a base. Then all I had to do was slip the socket into the whole and screw in the lightbulb.
The next model I created was a lot better in theory than in practice. I had this cool idea to use wire to make “branches” that could wrap around a cone to make the angle of light adjustable. Unfortunately, the wire just doesn’t like to bend in a way that would be helpful for that.
I used the same technique as the day before to create a pole and a base. Then I took a few lengths of wire and attached them to the top of the pole after folding them in half. I made a cone, again using the same technique as before, and put the lightbulb inside.
Unfortunately, I really struggled with getting the wires to hold the cone up in a helpful way. It wouldn’t sit at the right angle, or if it did, the cone started to slip out.
Finally, I wanted to try to make a lamp whose light intensity was adjustable. I repeated a similar process to how I made my sketch model for yesterday’s class (except I attached the cone to the cylinder differently. I made an angled cut across the top of the cylinder so the cone would fit perfectly and then just taped them together).
Then, I traced the wide end of the cone onto four varying weights of paper and cut out each circle. I attached them all to the cone with a tiny piece of tape, creating a hinge at the highest point of the circle at the end of the cone. I used a tiny strip of heavy paper that I folded in half as a tab, attaching it to the bottom of the circle and sticking up. This way it can hold whichever level of paper the user chooses.
I arranged the papers from lightest to heaviest, so you can just fold down the next piece of paper if you want the light to be weaker.
This was definitely an interesting experiment and I might try to do something similar in the future.
november 20, 2020
I decided to use my circular lamp model to refine into a prototype, since I thought it was the most successful and cohesive.
I planned to create an entirely new one, but I didn’t realize I had run out of the right weight of paper until after the art store was closed for the weekend. Next time I’ll plan ahead better. I ended up just modifying my existing model.
In our breakout rooms yesterday, Steve pointed out that the cord on my model was sort of getting in the way. I attempted to fix this problem by taping the cord back along the curved paper.
This seemed to work out pretty well, except now there was an ugly cord across the back of the lamp. I tried covering it with a regular piece of cardstock, but I ran into some issues with fitting it to the form. I kept getting these weird side bubbles, and it just didn’t look very good.
So I took it off and went with another approach. I took a few pieces of paper and crumpled them up, and used those to cover the cord. This turned out much better, because the existing folds can bend with the paper/wire construction a lot easier, and still hide the cord. It’s not perfect—you can see the lines where the different pieces of paper overlap. In my next version, I’ll try to get a big enough piece of paper that this isn’t an issue.
I also used this crumpled paper technique to cover the base of the socket that sticks out of the back of the lamp in a really ugly way. It definitely helped!
If I have more time this weekend, I might mess around with putting something on the sides to help shape or form the light. I think that’s the next most important thing to focus on.
Here are some pictures of the lamp in use!
november 30, 2020
Today I had an idea for another way I could try to hide the cord. I took strips of paper and cut and folded them into this shape:
I made a bunch of these and layered them around the back side of the lamp. The idea was that the curved part would still be able to bend, but the cord would be covered.
I decided I didn’t like how angular it was in comparison to the rest of the lamp which is very round and fluid, so I redid the strips in a rounder way.
I cut them out in this shape instead, and used a pen to curl in the three edges that didn’t get taped down.
When I finished all of the flaps, it looked like this.
It kind of looks like a dragon, armadillo, or a bug, which I don’t love. I think I might go back to the crumpled paper concept, but we’ll see how class goes tomorrow.
In the meantime I wanted to figure out a way to shield the light from the lightbulb a little more. I ended up cutting out a bunch of circles to overlap them.
I taped them around each edge, and added tape both to the inside and outside edges of each circle. This worked really well. They overlap with each other, which holds them in place when the lamp is “closed”, and they help soften the light from the bulb instead of having a bare lightbulb when the lamp is “open.”
It looks so much like a bug to me. I’m almost certain I’ll end up removing the “scales” and finding some other method to hide the cord.
december 2, 2020
I ended up removing everything I added for yesterday and going in a different direction. I realized that I disliked my design so much because it was really busy and complex, which took away from the simplicity of the base form. With this in mind, I finished my lighting engine in a more minimalist way. First, I created a little cap to cover the socket. I just cut out a little strip of paper and wrapped it around the socket, and then cut a notch in the bottom for the cord to go through. I added a lid to the cap by cutting out a circle with tabs along the outside, then folding those tabs in and taping them to the inside. The cap just slides right over the socket, but isn’t attached with any tape or anything so it can be removed if the socket needs to be changed out.
Then I added circles to the sides of the lightbulb. I traced my masking tape to get nice circles, and then added two tabs at 12 and 3 o’clock on each circle. I folded these in and slid them between the layers of paper forming the curved part of the lamp, then taped them there so they would stay in place, but the tape wouldn’t affect the light coming through the paper.
Finally, to cover the cord, I cut out another piece of paper the same width as the curved part of the lamp. I cut a circle out of it for the cap to poke through and taped it directly to the cord instead of attaching its sides to the other layers of paper. This allows the entire unit to still bend without creating weird bubbles. Finally, I cut out a little rectangle for the cord to poke through, and a slit from the bottom of the rectangle to the end of the strip of paper so the cord could pass through the rectangle. I’m really happy with how it turned out.
