This wooden plant spotlight is perfect to highlight your cutest little plants in the evening, and give them the attention they deserve! I made this project to try out new techniques with a lasercutter, and I really wanted to try out the wood bending technique you see here: https://www.instructables.com/Curved-laser-bent-wood/

In this instructable you'll find all the steps and files to make your very own curved wood plant spotlight!

Supplies

Tools/Machines:

Lasercutter
Soldering Machine & solder

Materials:

MDF board 3mm (minimal size of 400 by 600 mm)
Woodglue
Small switch
3V Battery (or 2 battery's 1.5V)
2 LED's
2 resistors (220 Ohm each)
Cable
2 LED clips

Step 1: Design

I started off by making a design for my spotlight. In this process I used Blender to create a 3D model, and in Illustrator I drew out all the sides I needed to cut out with the laser. I used 3mm MDF, so if you use a thicker material you should recalculate some of the sides (especially the holes/ for assembly!). If you use 3mm material you can download and directly cut out the files below. (dxf for lasercutter).

Step 2: Laser Cutting

With all the wood cut out, the project starts to take some shape!

Curved Wood Plant Spotlight - Step #2
Download

Step 3: Circuit

Before we assemble the wooden construction, we have to take a look at the elektronics. To understand how everything should be connected I made a scheme with all the elektrical components layed out. As you can see the LED's both have their own resistor(220 Ohm per LED). Of course we want the wiring to be as simple as possible, so as soon as the two positive wires meet we connect them. This also goes for the two negative wires; solder them to a longer wire that goes down to the bottom.

Step 4: Soldering & Assembly

When I started soldering the wires I realised I needed to assembly some of the wooden parts aswell already. Some wires needed to go through small holes, which wouldn't fit anymore after I soldered the whole circuit together. So step 4 is a sort of parrallel process, which involves a LOT of thinking about the right order.

The wires I used to connect everything came from an old phonecharger, but you can use any wires that conduct elektricity. In the pictures you can see I put the box together with woodglue (except for the bottom!), and put the switch in there before soldering anything. The first thing I soldered were the resistors. I directly soldered those at the short wire of the led, the negative. I then soldered the positive wire from the switch to the lights. I had already put those in place, so I could see how long the wires would have to be. In this step you need to think about the LED clips, you might have to put them on the wire first.

Step 5: Battery Connection

To make sure the wires connect steady to the battery you can cut out some aluminium circles out of tealights.

Step 6: Test

After you have connected everything in the right order, you might want to test it before closing the whole wooden construction of. In my case everything worked, so I could close it. I made sure to tape all the soldered parts with isolationtape to prevent short circuit.

As you can see I also taped the battery to the wires, which is okay (could be better though). However, the bottom is designed to be removable so it will be easy to change this later on.