There was some cleaning up to do as some of the resin leaked through the CD and made a mess on the under-side of the lamp. This would be visible, so I wanted to make it look better. It would also make it difficult to attach the disc to a riser. I picked the resin off with a sharp knife and an awl.
The cast wasn’t 100% successful as the mold was not sitting flat in the ice-cream container. The disc is about 13mm on one end and 10mm at the other side … meh.
Then … I connected it to the USB power supply (5.1V) and it looks pretty snazzy.
It throws a decent amount of light too.
With the disc turned over, so that the LED are facing downward, it looks pretty good too. The clear CD acts as a bit of a light-pipe, the cast blue light is pretty satisfying and the light coming through the resin looks nice too.
I need to figure out how to attach it to a riser and stand. I was originally thinking of casting a riser using the resin with the wires passing through the middle of the cast. That would involve pouring half of the mold, letting it set a little, laying a tube through the centre of the riser and then filling the mold with resin. I should end up with a riser that has a void in the middle where I can pass the wires through. Then I was thinking of making a base with a switch in it that would hold the disc and riser.
An alternative idea is to affix a clip onto the disc so that the light could be clipped on to a shelf over the bed. For that I’d need to make a small switch enclosure.
I dunno what to do … but I’m thinking about it.
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