A lighting design with wood and pelxi glass.

Step 1: What Do You Need?

· 7 x “10 cm x 10 cm” plexiglass (3mm thickness recommended)

· 14 x 10 cm length LED strips (The color that you prefer)

· 2 x “2 cm x 16 cm x 10.6 cm” sized wooden piece

· 1 x “2 cm x 14 cm x 10.6 cm” sized wooden pieces

· 1 x “2 cm x 18 cm x 10.6 cm” sized wooden piece

· Soldering iron

· Circular saw

· Bandsaw

· Laser cutting machine

· Computer-aided Design software (AutoCAD)

Step 2: Designing With Software

First of all; for laser cutting, draw the pattern which you

would like to place on the plexiglass plates with using a computer-aided software. I prefered AutoCAD because of usage flexibility and also for being experienced in this software myself.

For first step, draw the circles inside of 7 rectangles as shown by the image.

The circles that I drew are sized: 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 mm and the single one, 8 mm radius. (listed from edge to center)

The important part is; to place the smallest circles (2 mm) 2 cm’s away from the edge of the rectangle, and to place the other ones 1 cm away from each other. The center point of the biggest circle (8 mm) should be placed on the intersection point of 2 diagonal lines which are placed between opposite corners of rectangle.

I also uplod the DXF files of drawing. (bütün_ayrışmış.dxf)

bütün_ayrışmış.dxf
Download

Step 3: Cutting the Plexiglass Plates

After finishing the design process, cut the plexiglass pieces with laser cutter.

Step 4: Preparing the Wooden Pieces

This is the most confusing step.

2 of the wooden parts will be the part which plexiglass plates are standing on and LED strips are placed on. The other 2 will be pedestal for the lighting.

For the face that plexiglass plates will be standing on; cut 7 channels with a circular saw, which are 3 mm wide and 1 cm far away from each other. For the parts that right under the channels, cut another 7 channels (one under each) which are 8 mm wide. (That is because the LED strips that I used are 8 mm wide. If you’d prefer different sized LED strips, then you should consider to change the sizes of the wooden parts.)

Step 5: Connecting the LED’s

First, get your 10 cm long 14 LED strips ready for connection. Arrange the correct size and amount of cables and solder LED strips to each other with them. Different connecting methods can be used...

Step 6: Pasting the Wooden Pieces

Paste the two wooden pieces to each other with proper glue and

clamp tools.

Step 7: Attaching LED Strips and Plexiglass Plates to the Wooden Piece

First, cut another channel to the wooden piece. (This one is

for power source of the LED’s) I used a bandsaw for this step but it is not necesary, you can use a different tool as long as it is not harmful or deforming for the wooden piece. (screwdriver, portable handsaw, drill etc.)

Place the LED strips to the channels below them. You can place small styrofoam cubes to the bottom of the LED strips, to aviod getting them replaced. In my case, I didn’t need them because the sizes of the LED strips and the channels for them matches.

-WARNING-

Try not to push plexiglass plates into wooden pieces so hard. Otherwise it can move LED’s, or even break them.

And then paste other two wooden pieces to the glued piece.

Now it’s time for the easiest step :) place the plexiglass plates in correct order