README

Wendy Neale, Designer and Director of Fab Lab Wgtn, in New Zealand was the Mentor-in-Residence at Fab Lab UAE from January to July 2018, during Fab Academy. In the fifth week of Fab Academy, the Lab hosted the first Mini MakerFaire in the UAE. Fab Lab UAE asked her to design a paper lampshade for some casual workshops that would run during the four-day event. Here is what she did:

With everything else going on in the Lab, I found myself with only a couple of days to prepare, so I spent some time cutting and folding paper and trying out some ideas. I needed to work more quickly, so I decided to build on some existing work rather than developing it from the beginning. Looking at the Crease Patterns created by RJ Lang, I decided to adapt the CamphorPot8, opus 679. Referencing this pattern added to the story as I was able to talk about the work he did on the Deployable Solar Array, where he built on someone else's work, showing the benefit of not starting from zero. It's also a great example of the broader uses of paper-folding!

RJ Lang's website is full of great patterns that he has developed, and if you look around it, you will find that he has very clear copyright statements. He is open to uses of his patterns for educational purposes as long as you have his written permission and always give credit to him for his crease patterns.

I drew up a file in Illustrator and tested it and modified it a number of times. One day, I might make it in something else, but I was in a hurry and wasn't too concerned about other people being able to edit it.”

After the four-day event, she collaborated with Etienne Moreau, Technical Demonstrator at Fab Lab Wgtn in New Zealand from February to July 2018, to work on the lamp prototype she started and create a 2-hour workshop to help people learn to make their own custom lampshades! Along with the file and material settings, you’ll find the workshop run-sheet including steps to learn how to do it on your own!

Fab Lab Wgtn Lampshade (white model) and a custom model made by a community member (blue model)

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Files in this repo

• a Lampshade template in .ai and .dxf format to make your custom design

• the Materials list, settings & machine specs

• a Workshop runsheet to run your own Lampshade workshop

• the Instructions to hand out to participants attending the workshop

• Fab Lab Wgtn’s Lampshade ready-to-cut sample in .ai and .dxf format

• others custom designs we made at Fab Lab Wgtn in .ai and .dxf format

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Machine & software used

To create our lamps, we only used:

• a laser cutter (machine/process available in many Fab Labs - ours is a ILS12.150D Universal, powered with a 105W laser unit, with a bed-size of 1219.2x609.7mmm)

• Adobe Illustrator vector drawing software (a good free & open source alternative is Inkscape!)

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Materials recommended

So far, we made great lampshades out of

• 0.6mm polypropylene (the white model) or 0.35mm colored craft paper (the dark blue model)

• and 3mm acrylic (for the light socket fitting)

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Layout of the Lampshade template

The page size is equal to our laser cutter bed size. There are 6 layers in the document and 3 art-boards (the Universal Laser print driver can deal with more than one art-board). There are also graphic styles already pre-set to prepare the file for laser cutting (pure red 0.1 pt stroke to cut, pure green 0.1 pt stroke to make creasing lines)

• The 3 art-boards are:

  • art-board 1 - to cut the final lamp

  • art-board 2 (below) - to work on your very own lamp design

  • art-board 3 (right) - to cut the acrylic fitting

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• The 6 layers are:

  • the notes & black guides (on art-board 1)

  • the lamp red cutouts (on art-board 1)

  • the lamp green creasing lines (on art-board 1)

  • a draft layer dedicated to prep your design (on art-board 1)

  • the acrylic fitting (on art-board 3 - on the right side)

  • the logos & credits for the acrylic fitting (on art-board 3 - on the right side)

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• Black lines are guides:

  • The thin grey dotted lines are symetry guides

  • The thick black lines are guides to align your design with the first petal of the Lampshade

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what the Lampshade vector template looks like in Illustrator

a ready-to-fold Lampshade & a finished model

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Workshop layout - create a “2-hour make your own lampshade” workshop

• License - Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License

  

• original design - Wendy Neale, based on an existing pattern by R. J. Lang

• workshop creators - Wendy Neale & Etienne Moreau (Fab Lab Wgtn)

• creation date - May 2018

• workshop type - hands-on workshop, 2 hours

• advised number of participants - 6

• machine needed - laser cutter with at least a 500x500mm bed

• software needed - vector drawing software like Inkscape or Illustrator

• suggested materials - for each lamp, a 500x500mm piece of 0.6mm white polypropylene or 0.35mm colored paper + a 85x80mm piece of 3mm acrylic