LED Human Pipe Lamp

In this project I've made a sitting person silhouette lamp using water pipes and a valve, that's normally used to control the flow of liquid substances as a electrical switch, which will operate the LED bulb fitted into human head. Enjoy.

1) Pipes and connectors.

Different shapes and sizes. I've made a body from 1/2 inch, but head is a 2 inch elbow, everything is recycled from old systems, so free.

2) Gate valve for the switch. I've used 1/2 inch one, bought one for £3.99 online.

3) Pipe threader.

I've used one at my workplace, so this didn't cost me a penny, but elements can also be welded together, if someone got access to a welder.

4) Electrical components.

A cable, a plug, a bulb and a switch. Only switch was new, everything else recycled. It's a miniature momentary toggle switch and I've paid a whooping £2.80 incl. delivery. It has a spring inside, so in order to change it's position you need to push it down and hold it. Once pressure is removed, internal spring will push it back to its neutral position. This "function" was crucial for my project, more about it later.

After having a rough idea how I'd like my lamp to look like, I've started with cutting pipes, laying it flat and checking what length of legs and arms will look the best. Then, I've threaded ends of the pipes, roughly assembling all pieces together, and making adjustments where needed.

Initially my legs came out weirdly too short, and arms too long, so I've swapped the limbs around, chopped some more off here and there until eventually it looked the way I wanted.

This was the most time consuming part, especially when making it for the first time. You don't want to cut too much off and end up with a piece that's too short, so sometimes it takes more than a single cut to get the right length.

Sorry no pictures were taken during making of this step!

Using sand blasting booth, courtesy of my workplace, I've cleaned all rust and old paint to help paint "stick" better. I've closed the "hand" end of the switch with the sight glass fitting, so it'll be possible to see the how the switch actually works. To stop glass from scratching, I've blocked it with a blu tack, and I've covered the bulb hole with old glove to stop sand going inside.

Next, I've had to temporary open some joints, in order to run a pilot cable through, and then I've joined body sections together along with the pilot cable inside. Once everything was fully assembled, I've attached final cable to the pilot one, and run it from the head section to the back side (somewhere in the middle of the lumbar area of the spine), and to the hand.

I've removed LED bulb connectors to fit the entire bulb inside the head, and I've soldered wires directly onto internal PCB. To make it safer, I've welded short thread to the inside of the head, and connected earth terminal into it.

The thread size of the switch was identical to the threat size of the gate valve that I've used so that made my life easier. I've screwed it from the inside of the valve, and locked it from the back with locking nut in a position where the lever sits under the valves gate. Switch has three terminals, and can be configured as push to make or push to brake. I've set it up in a similar way as those valves are used to stop or restrict the flow of fluids, so in my case it's a "push to break" configuration. When you close the valve by rotating the knob clockwise, the gate inside will go down pushing the lever. This will break the circuit and the light will go off. If you mimic opening the valve to let eg. water to go through this will move the gate upwards, and the spring within the switch will activate the LED bulb.

Later I've glued the bulb into the correct position, and the bulbs glass cover, which was removed for painting. Some paint came off when removing blue tack, but using small brush I've managed to make this looks good again.

There's a lot of similar projects online, with one big, or little difference. Every one I saw, used standard generic switch fitted either to the body or on the cable. Making the switch the way I've made it, was the biggest challenge of this project, but I found it cool to be operate electricity using something that usually used to control water.

If I had to do it again, I'll try to use dimmable bulb and some potentiometer type of a switch. This will mimic the valve operation even better.

Thank you.