I’ve got a bunch of different veneer, a led driver, and some high quality lights. The only thing I’m lacking is! An idea for using it
So while I try to think of an implementation work doing, I’ll just be posting updates on the experimentation today.
Folks should feel free to ask about whatever. Equipment, technique, just want be to test something specific, whatever you want. I’ve got a fire going and a rare completely free day
Driver is a nifty Meanwell with integrated Matter for wireless control and dimming. This should make for very simple integration in most smart home systems or business wireless systems.
I’ve never used it (or any matter device) and it was literally one click and a photo of the QR code to add it. Finally something I would be comfortable providing to most consumers I would expect to buy this sort of lighting.
110-240v in and 24v dimmable out for powering a strip of analog LEDs.
I might take the next while to cut a logo or mask to make the lighting tests more interesting.
I did a very quick sorting of the ~light transmission for each veneer I’ve got in my identification pack.
High, medium, low, none.
High is a great even distribution of light.
Medium has good distribution but there are grains that block light.
Low is almost entirely blocked but there are grains that allow though (basically opposite of medium)
None is effectively opaque
Next up is making a jig so I can quickly iterate and photograph at different distances from the light source.
I’m thinking the distances will be
~in contact (some of the near opaque woods look incredible when the light is nearly pressed against them)
An inch away.
Two inches away.
Though we’ll see when we get around to it.
This will end up being something like 150 photos so I’m not quite sure how to share them here yet. Time will tell.
Here’s a quick preview
If this goes well maybe I’ll do a video of the same setup with an rgb strip setup going through the rainbow and maybe a video of fire effects.
Oh I’m familiar with the technique, I’ve just not played with it in wood. Nice uniform materials like engineered stone is what I’m more familiar with. Of course there’s also a ton of projects around 3d printing and processing. Some of the cmyk color 3d printed lithography is nuts, super cool stuff out there.
I wanted to do an actual project with some birch ply before doing all the testing. Just to get a little project done this weekend.
A friend streams on twitch.tv and does a lot of botany/education stuffs. His stream background is a very clean white aesthetic with lots of natural light and a ton of plants.
Maybe some light wood and preserved moss could look good. Super cozy, warm wood light with something specific to his community
For testing, a Carbide 3D logo seemed appropriate:
I inverted the colors, with the green of the logo being backlit wood and the negative space being preserved moss. (In hindsight, I wish I wouldn’t have done that but that’s just one of many lessons learned)
To keep the wood oriented appropriately, a 3d printed backer is used with some edges. There are better ways to do this and I’ll likely use something metallic as a heat sink for the strips, this works for a quick prototype though.
Here’s a cross section:
The approach here is to remove everything but the top layer of veneer in the birch ply. Luckily the ply is relatively consistent, only about 0.1mm thickness variance from what I can tell.
Yeah I was surprised it was that consistent, though I don’t have much experience with plywood so maybe I just got lucky
To be honest, I didn’t expect it to work. I was fully prepared to lay a sheet of veneer overtop if it broke through at all. Which I might still do for the next project to get some grain variation.
In the back of my mind I’m thinking how cool a backlight chessboard would be, especially one of the large format wall hanging ones meant to be played over the course of days.
But man what a ton of work that would be.
Yeah the variation is going to be really fun to play with. I could imagine some incredible motifs with dyed veneers as well. I probably won’t ever get to them but the possibility is exciting.
The backer is something I’ve thought about a bit and looked into. Finding a good transparent material that the veneer won’t delaminate from with environmental changes is the challenge…maybe the veneer glues are strong enough and flexible enough to deal with that though
If you’ve got any ideas or experience here I’m definitely open to suggestions
) project:
