This week we were tasked with making a lampshade. I knew I wanted to try and incorporate the aesthetic from my Week 1 assignment but I once again underestimated the difficulty of translating designs from the digital to the physical.

Step 1: First Round of Designs

The first thing I did was copy one of the curves from my Week 1 project and paste it into the Rhino UI. Next, I added a circle for where the lightbulb would be, raised it up the Z-axis, and then used Loft. Even though it looked extremely cool, even I could tell it wasn't going to be viable for printing. A strange twisting was happening with the interpolation between the bottom shape and the upper circle, and the resulting folds would overlap with each other and create a steep ledge. However, I knew I wanted to somehow maintain the appearance of fabric in motion.

Step 2: Second Round of Designs

Next, I tried creating a tower of shapes that progressed from the bottom shape to a circle, to try and alleviate some of the weird behavior in Loft. However, this still created issues and even created what looked to be two lampshades stacked on top of each other rather than a continuous slope downwards. I started worrying that I'd have to do something unexciting to have the print done in time. It was generally a challenge to have to have something done by Friday, and unfortunately I ended up having something done by Saturday instead.

Step 3: Final Round of Designs

I started doing a tutorial that created Metaballs. Even though I didn't end up going with the design, I really liked the node I learned about from the tutorial called GenePool. It lets you create a number of different number sliders to then connect to a charge input that is applied to each Metaball separately. I finally found the right combination of squishy and round as the bottom layer of my design, and the resulting Loft still looked cool while looking somewhat printable. The part I was most worried about was the most twisted and narrow beam of the fabric, but it ended up being fine and became my favorite part of my result.

Step 4: Printing + Final Touches

The resulting print was successful -- honestly a result I wasn't expecting. I liked the size, although I realize I could have gone for taller. It really did look like a tablecloth being spun. The top didn't fully lay flat so there seemed to be an issue with the bottom curve lying flat on the plane. I also realized after attempting to insert the light that I had made an even bigger mistake. I measured the top with a caliper and saw that it was 46mm and not the 23mm I had expected. At first, I thought that maybe my dimensions had been incorrect, and I had doubled everything, but the base looked to be the correct size because it filled most of the 3D printing bed. I swore that the circle I made at the top was 23mm -- until I realized that when I created the circle the command was for the radius of the circle, not the diameter. I ended up putting a collar in with the world's worst hot glue gun job. I actually hadn't used a hot glue gun before, so that new experience was an unexpectedly positive result of this assignment.