Spherical Cardboard Lamp

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!

If you enjoyed this project, please vote for it in the Hurricane Lasers contest above.

Comments

[chris.andersen.2700]

Cool project!
Is it in any way possible to update the Sphere Generator to cm? This would be so great!

[PritiB4]

Any other options [for cutting rings] instead of Laser cut?

[morganeheymans]

Hi. Can you take a look at your program? Because when I try to save the files, there is nothing in the files. The size is also 1 or 2 kb's, which is much smaller compared to your files (1400 kb's). A couple of months ago, it worked to save the files. So I have no idea what I'm doing wrong.

[AntonV20]

I thought id try to make a huge one but i cant find spheregen.exe? Could you post a download link :)
Thanks

[Robizzle01]

If you follow the link to the thingiverse page and go to the files section, it's already there.

http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:14272/#files

[morganeheymans]

I would love to make this beautiful lamp myself! I tried understanding the files and opening them as a jpg file, but I don't understand it. It would be really helpful if you could give me the size of all the different diameters or radius' I have to cut and the width of the circles. I'm from Belgium, so we work in cm's instead of inches. So that makes is even more difficult for me to understand your templates. But I'm in love with this beautiful lamp, and it's so expensive to buy the original one. So I really hope you could help me!

[Robizzle01]

Converting units is easy, just divide the inches by 2.54 to get centimeters.

The files are SVG format, which is very much different from jpeg and explains why opening them as jpg didn't work. As I described in another comment, svg files are just XML (text) files and are pretty human-readable. Here's a snippet from my previous comment:

If you open one of the svg files in a text editor, like notepad, you'll see that the file format is quite human-readable. Each circle is defined like so (brackets omitted because instructables removes XML tags):

circle cx="6in" cy="6in" r="5.498in" stroke="black" stroke-width="0.1" fill="none" /

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 also 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 oval instead of a sphere. I recommend using digital calipers to measure the thickness of 5 pieces of cardboard, and divide by 5 to get the average thickness.

*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.

[Paige Russell]

Love this!

[geokaren]

so you need a laser printer or die cutter to do this?

[nthomas12]

Nice instructions, I had students, 1 semester, making functional objects out of paper products, and got several cardboard lamps of various shapes and sizes. I've also seen them for sale for exorbitant amounts of money. Of course we didn't have access to a laser, so they were all hand cut, or scroll-saw cut!!! :)

[codename-3c]

Oh my god this is gorgeous! I was thinking it looked like Jupiter too.

[Denger]

Is there a template set available for those who would like to build this design 'old school': that is, using a craft knife instead of a laser? Cool design and a nice 'structable, btw!

[Bobmonkey07]

You could make a template.

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...

[Robizzle01]

There isn't, but if you open one of the svg files in a text editor, like notepad, you'll see that the file format is quite human-readable. Each circle is defined like so:



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.

[Denger]

Well, as Dr. Theodore H. Mainan, who developed the first working optical laser in 1960 supposedly stated, lasers really have been a “solution in search of a problem.” They seem to do very well at each of the applications for which they've been developed. Now all I need to do is get one added as a line item on the family budget!

[Robizzle01]

Unfortunately instructables stripped out my XML snippet from above. I'll just remove the angular brackets and hope this works:

circle cx="6in" cy="6in" r="5.498in" stroke="black" stroke-width="0.1" fill="none" /

[Dr. P]

Wow! That's beautiful! Let us know if Ikea calls you to design for them.

[Penolopy Bulnick]

That looks awesome! Did you purposefully put the pieces together in such a way to very how the wavy the corrugated cardboard shows? (If that makes sense)

[Penolopy Bulnick]

Oh, duh! I guess I missed that step since it was optional! I love how you arranged it :)

[Robizzle01]

Thanks! If I recall, I used a 15-degree rotation between each layer.