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. We 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.
The page size is equal to the laser bed size. There are five layers in the document and two artboards. Each process has its own layer to make it easier to adjust later, and the second page holds the design for the acrylic piece for the light fitting. (The Universal print driver can deal with more than one artboard)
I cut it out of 0.25mm thick cardboard/heavy craftpaper, using an ILS12.150D Universal laser cutter, powered with a 75W laser unit & a bed-size of 1219.2mm x 609.7mmm. I can't remember what that is in Americanese.
All vectors, print in order. You will see that the PPI for colour blue is down to 10 pulses per inch. This makes a dotted line instead of a continuous line, allowing light to escape as well as making it easier to crease the card in the direction you want it to.
Below are the standard settings I made for this material - to print one with these settings takes 3 minutes and 47 seconds. When I made a larger number of these, I optimised them. Because the lines are straight(ish) and the material is thin, a little more speed produces similar results. I upped the speed to 18% and the power by 1 - 2%.
Just crease it. Gently encourage it to be the shape it secretly wants to be.
