Lighting Suggestions For A Voronoi Lantern

Oh should have mentioned it’s going to sit on a table

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LED strips hidden in/running vertically in the four corner pillars, oriented at 45° towards the centre? And japanese paper on the inside of the voronoi faces

Edit: I just remembered I used tracing paper back when I did those

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I’ve had some luck with lighting the edges of thick plexiglass with LED strips. SO the strips would be on either the bottom (or top) and the four pieces would be aligned within the edges of the lamp. The lights shine up (or down) into the edge of the “glass” and make the whole thing kind of glow. If you etch the glass, you can get all sorts of diffraction patterns as well. And no hot spots.

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You could cut another voroni pattern into the Plexiglas panels and light them from both the top and bottom. When you buy the LED strip, you will have plenty left over. Also, in addition to the 12VDC LED srips available, you can gt 5VDC strips as well, and use a USB-C breakout socket or micro-USB breakout socket and power adapter. I made a light with a micro-USB socket since those cables and power supplies are inexpensive and more common than the 12VDC barrel jack and plug.

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Traslucent, diffusing tube around your LEDs.
Or, better and easier, panels of LEDs on the floor and ceiling, diffused with lighting acrylic.

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LED on the floor and ceiling would make wiring a bit more difficult, but I like the idea of an acrylic rod or tube being edge lit. Wonder if I can find Neopixel rings and an acrylic tube with the same diameter.

A paper tube offset from the grills with LEDs behind it is also an interesting idea.

I like the idea of using 5V led strips and a usb-c connector. One connector to rule them all!!

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A work in progress - combining a number of ideas. 3D carve of the dragon, resin fill with tinted resin, embedded LED strip concealed in the bottom so direct light doesn’t distract. A finishing layer of resin is planned to put the final glassy finish on.
Not a lantern, but some parallels…

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Rendering with a 2.5 in cylinder inside acting as a light source. I like it. Just not sure what to make the tube from at this point.

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Light diffusing plastic tubes are expensive. What about a glass “candle cover tube” (don’t know what they’re called…my Mother-in-law has them)?
Amazon knew what I meant.

The Aluminum grills are at the max height of the stock I have. Already going to have to play games securing it for machining. So whatever I use for a diffuser will need to be cut down most likely so glass is out. I’ll look around for a plastic one like that though.

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How about a clear tube, like the ones used for dust collection systems, sanded or something applied to make it frosted.

I had a student make small lantern like that and he used plastic straws to diffuse individual 5mm LEDs.

Another student used tyvek to cover the sides…she actually did a voronoi pattern with her initials on it. On that one, we used a standard bulb base that I scavenged from a remodel job in the neighborhood. The tyvek was from envelopes.
We tried all kinds of flat material wrapped into a cylinder, but it only works if you cover the seam and make it look like an intentional part of the design.

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I’m going to stop by a dollar store and see if they have any cheap plastic hurricane glasses.

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I’ve been thinking about how to code (in Lua, inside VCarve Pro) a Voronoi and/or Hilbert pattern to use either as a fretwork pattern generator, or as a ‘hatch pattern’ - the latter being useful if the output device is drawing oriented rather than cutter oriented. I have a crude code prototype running in C, just need to translate it into Lua and the various drawing and path objects… and then work out how to efficiently boundary clip the patterns…

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Andy Corteen,
Are you thinking about making a Vectric Gadget ? I would be happy to beta test on Aspire.

I am looking for a good excuse to use Fadecandy in a lighting application. This may be it!
Neopixel begs for FadeCandy
The controller is expensive but worth it for the effect

I can see a cotton cloud captivated and hiding the LEDs - (Google “Cloud Light”)

FUN!

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Consider “Frosted Glass, Rust-Oleum Specialty Spray Paint”
I used it on shed windows and it worked great.

CthulhuLabs,
If you like the concept of aluminum and wood, check out:
Attila’s Workshop
Beautiful desk lamp - https://youtu.be/MTNtwabNqqo

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@JimInAshland I do intend coding the Voronoi maps in Lua, but I have a few projects to finish off first… Building a new workshop so I am not sharing my garage space with the motorcycles (or is it them reluctantly sharing with me?), some off-cut glue-up decorative chopping boards, and once a piece of specimen timber arrives (Woodshop Direct, UK), making a pair of Tapered Barley Twist standard lamps - I have worked out how to make these in 2.5D, and just need to complete these to finally prove the idea. If I remember I will document the machine steps and design files.

Well this sucks. Broke my good 1/8 inch end mill while probing (forgot to attach the probe wire) and my cheap 1/8 inch bits dont like cutting Al. Now I ruined a piece of my limited stock and broke an endmill. Plus I put a nick in my BitZero.

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That does indeed suck, sorry. Maybe a little humor would help?

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