Epoxy Resin LED Lamp

This project is a newer version of one my earlier posted projects (The DIY lamp). It functions with just a different housing.

Electronics

• Arduino Nano
• Jumper wire
• 5v RGB LED Strip
• 5v battery

Materials

• Teak (20x3x1cm) - 4 pieces
• Teak (8x3x1cm) - 5 pieces
• Pinewood (1x1cm stick)
• Acrylic (Matte black)
• Acrylic (Frosted clear)

Attached here are some initial dimension sketches with the plans for the lamp. The idea is to create a rectanguloid (rough dimensions 20x8x9cm). The lamp will consist of six main parts: two long-side wood/resin pieces (labeled piece 1 in files), two acrylic pieces (labeled acrylic piece), one top wood/resin piece (labeled piece 2), and one bottom wood piece.

In this step I used some of the wood stick to form the mold for my epoxy/wood pieces. I made three molds in total. Two identical molds for the side pieces, and one mold for the top.

Here, I mixed the two portions of resin in a 1:1 ratio, carefully measuring out the volume of the space being filled. In my case, this was (3x20x1cm) for piece 1 and (8x3x1cm) for piece 2. Some important things to remember when casting resin is to do it in a well-ventilated space and ensure that you seal any cracks to prevent spill. In my case, I glued the pieces to a thick piece of paper and used additional glue to seal any possible cracks. I mixed the pigments in after pouring and waited till the resin started to harden before adding the white pigment (as before that it would just keep sinking).

After finishing the resin casting, I sanded and cut the mold/paper off of the pieces and confirmed they were the proper dimensions. Following this I cut two 3mm slots that were 2.5mm deep into all the wood pieces to confirm where the acrylic pieces would slot in. I did this 1cm in from the edge of the wood pieces.

Following this I also made the mitre joint for the 3 epoxy pieces, sanding the edges to 45 degrees with a disc sander. Both outcomes are shown in the photos attached.

Lastly, I sanded all the pieces thoroughly, moving up the grits from 60 to 320.

I glued the 3 acrylic pieces together using a right-angle clamp and also applied the first layer of teak oil, as seen in the photos. Following this, I moved on to the acrylic pieces

The plan for the laser cut pieces was shown in the dimension section of this Instructable. Essentially, I cute out the main piece from matte black acrylic. I replaced the letters that were cutout with new letters that I'd cut out from frosted acrylic. Just to clarify, all the acrylic I used was 3mm thick.

The bottom platform and circuit itself were very simple. For the bottom platform, I glued together 3 of the 8cm teak pieces and cut the dimensions down to (9x6x1cm). This way the piece fit in between the two larger resin pieces and could be held in place via friction. I also used the table router to make 3mmx2.5mm slots in the piece for the acrylic to rest in.

The circuit was pretty much the same as in my other lamp project. I glued old toilet paper rolls together and wrapped an LED strip around them from top to bottom. Within the toilet rolls, I housed the Arduino nano and its power source, a 5v battery (this can easily be replaced with a cord if preferred). As for the code, I used the FastLED library within Arduino, which pretty much allowed me to simply input the output pin number and then upload a bunch of cool LED patterns to the strip.

Once this was done, I put all the pieces together. The attached photos show the process of assembling the final lamp. A video of the lamp in action is also attached.

Thanks for reading!