This was a fun little project. A dodecahedron lamp, based off of a couple of projects a friend of mine has done with paper. This design is 7mm thick Mahogany boards (12 faces and 30 connectors). The really cool part is that the structure is stable enough that it’s not glued.
Really nice! You could also use the tabbing feature in CC to cut those panels all the way through, leaving tabs for support, which would allow light to shine through the panels as well.
Thanks! My original hope had been to have the material thin enough to look solid but let a tiny amount of light bleed through. No dice. The tabs are an interesting idea though. I might try that on the next one.
Might be hard to get mahogany thin enough to let light through, as it is pretty dense (~40lb/cuft). Might work better with a less dense wood, like pine (~25lb/cuft). Pine doesn’t even have to be that thin to let light through… https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LgsDWb0orSQ
Any chance you would be willing to share the design file for this ? I would love to roll my own version (with mods to let the light through the pentagons, as was already suggested)
Sure Julien. This is the Carbide Create file with two sides and two connectors. You need a total of 12 sides and 30 connectors. You will need to make adjustments for the stock thickness. Mine was 5mm, so you have to adjust your tabs and slots sizes accordingly.
It was also the opportunity to cut my very first aluminum parts with the Shapeoko, which went smoothly.
I think I’ll do a full MDF prototype version of the lamp this way, see how it looks, and go from there. I already spotted much nicer perforated sheets with interesting patterns.
So in the end the perforated aluminum approach did not look as good as I thought it would, so I came back to a full MDF prototype, played around based on the base design you provided, and got this:
Very nice! I like what you did with the base and the invisible connectors. Those work well with the pierced panels. I wonder if you could cut the panels out with a v-bit and make the outer edges meet.
You could fake it maybe? Cut at a steeper angle, then still use the little tab pieces to hold it all together? Glue the joints from the inside (as much as possible), use plain wood glue mixed with fine saw dust as a filler (trick I learned from my 6th grade wood shop teacher (You are dearly missed Sir!)).
