1. Acquire enough cardboard to create 32 11" square pieces
2. Head over to http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:14272 to download the laser template files or SphereGen.exe which will generate the templates for you. SphereGen lets you specify your cardboard thickness, desired width, height, and how much each layer should overlap adjacent layers. If you'll be using the Ikea "Hemma" cord set as your light fixture, the inner diameter should be 1.575 inches.
3. Laser cut all the rings
4. Sort the rings from smallest to largest. (There will be duplicates for most rings because they appear on the top and bottom halves.)
4b. (Optional) Stack the rings to get a feel for how it will look and play with different designs, like rotating each layer slightly to create a corrugation spiral effect.
5. Break out the Elmer's glue and start gluing layers to one another. Be careful to make sure that each layer is centered and you aren't slowly drifting away from the center.
6. Once the glue dries, treat the entire lamp with "No-Burn", a fire retardant spray. I found a bottle for $18 on Amazon. Just to play it safe, I also recommend using a LED light bulb to ensure the cardboard never becomes hot. (Although this is probably unnecessary -- after being lit by a traditional 60w incandescent bulb for half an hour my lamp's interior remained cool to the touch.)
7. Once dry, attach light fixture. I used an Ikea "Hemma" cord set which only costs $5. http://www.ikea.com/us/en/catalog/products/10175810/
8. Plug it in and enjoy!
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2. Head over to http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:14272 to download the laser template files or SphereGen.exe which will generate the templates for you. SphereGen lets you specify your cardboard thickness, desired width, height, and how much each layer should overlap adjacent layers. If you'll be using the Ikea "Hemma" cord set as your light fixture, the inner diameter should be 1.575 inches.
3. Laser cut all the rings
4. Sort the rings from smallest to largest. (There will be duplicates for most rings because they appear on the top and bottom halves.)
4b. (Optional) Stack the rings to get a feel for how it will look and play with different designs, like rotating each layer slightly to create a corrugation spiral effect.
5. Break out the Elmer's glue and start gluing layers to one another. Be careful to make sure that each layer is centered and you aren't slowly drifting away from the center.
6. Once the glue dries, treat the entire lamp with "No-Burn", a fire retardant spray. I found a bottle for $18 on Amazon. Just to play it safe, I also recommend using a LED light bulb to ensure the cardboard never becomes hot. (Although this is probably unnecessary -- after being lit by a traditional 60w incandescent bulb for half an hour my lamp's interior remained cool to the touch.)
7. Once dry, attach light fixture. I used an Ikea "Hemma" cord set which only costs $5. http://www.ikea.com/us/en/catalog/products/10175810/
8. Plug it in and enjoy!
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I'd use a dowel rod, a nail, a pencil, and a clamp.
Put the nail in at one end (all the way through), and clamp the pencil at various measured lengths. Put the nail into the cardboard, and push the pencil side all the way around. repeat with the pencil at different spots to mark the spots to cut.
Hopefully i worded that in a way that makes sense...
You can ignore cx and cy -- those are just the center coordinates of the circle*. The interesting bit is r, which is the radius. That should be all you need to reconstruct the templates using a compass and then you can craft knife away**.
I recommend starting with the center layers and working your way outward. This way you can stack the rings as you go. As you approach the light-hole on the bottom you can visually look at the sphere and decide when you want to stop.
I do recommend running spheregen.exe to generate the template files if you are doing this by hand because it is going to be a very time consuming process and you'll want it to look perfect when you're done. My templates were generated to use 0.17" thick cardboard, but if the cardboard you're using varies, even slightly, you'll end up with an ovid instead of a sphere.
*All circles have the same center. Laser cutters don't actually care about them, but it made viewing the svg files in internet explorer easier for me.)
**My unskilled self tried to do this originally with an exacto knife but I found that it crushed the cardboard. Getting a really perfectly circular line was also difficult.
circle cx="6in" cy="6in" r="5.498in" stroke="black" stroke-width="0.1" fill="none" /
I really like this, the picture makes it look like Jupiter :)