Dim the Lights Without a Dimmer - Mechanical Dimming Iris Lamp

I built this mechanically dimming lamp because, I hated the flicker of LED's when you dim them down. This flicker ruined my romantic dinners with my wife turning them into some sort of rave party. So using the idea of a camera aperture or iris. I designed and built this one of a kind lamp to mechanically dim light rather than do it electronically. In turn, saving my romantic dinners with my wife and ending rave parties at my house forever.

To make this awesome lamp you are going to need quite a bit of stuff. I'm nearly certain I have forgotten some small things here but the big stuff is all there.

Supplies:

1/2x - sheet 15mm plywood

1x - sheet 4 mm plywood

4x - 1000x500x0.7mm aluminum plate

1x - 1m LED Strip

5m - Electrical cable

1x - Electrical pull switch

0.5m - 12mm aluminum round bar

1m x Iron-on wood veneer

1x Super glue

1x Set stainless steel hanging wires

1x Wood stain (black)

1x Finishing oil (matte)

Tools:

Besides yourself, with your mad skills. Things will be a lot easier with a 3d printer, CNC machine and general power tools such as a drill, track saw, router and table saw . Don't have those things? Don't worry, these days there is always some annoying neighbor with more money than you, that bought a 3d printer or CNC just because they can. I've learnt that if you stroke their egos enough they'll cut and print all the parts you need. Failing that, feel free to struggle through the project using hand tools.

Designing this lamp proved to be challenging. I couldn't seem to come up with an original design. I tried copying designs from IKEA and other lamp shops, then modifying them. Despite that, they all just seemed to say....

"You are a devilishly handsome man but, a hack designer. You should give up and go home".

The problem was I was home. My workshop was in my flipping garage. I was stuck! Furthermore I had decided to make things worse by filming this project for a YouTube video. In the end I just found myself staring longingly in to the camera lens waiting for some sort of inspiration to hit me.

In fact that was exactly when it whacked me straight in the back of the head. Camera's have apertures! Apertures control light! What if I made a giant aperture lamp? A ring lamp with LEDs sandwiched between two apertures. One aperture controlling light up to the ceiling and another aperture controlling light down to the floor.

I had it! There was one problem though. Apertures were precision devices and if you saw my last project where I made a canoe from and old swimming pool. You will know precision is not quite my forte. So, if I was going to make this design work I was going to have to do it properly.

After reading "The Internet" I came across this website http://iris-calculator.com/ Where I could design the any sized aperture and download the DXF files for all the parts. This was a great start. However, I had to make some modifications in Fusion360 to make some of the parts compatible with my design.

All the STL files are here for you completely free of charge. Please download them and use them. However, if you enjoy my shenanigans I urge you to consider supporting me and my projects on Patreon in addition. https://www.patreon.com/user?u=32422944

The outer ring, is what will house all the parts for the lamp. For this I recommend hanging out in the back alley ways of music shops and music schools. Until some kid inevitably gives up on his dreams of being a drummer. Then you can snafu your self a base drum. I mean, if you are a purist you could steam bend this part but it is way more fun watching people give up on their dreams.

I also recommend you snafu yourself a base drum before thinking of making any other parts for this project as this part will determine, all your other measurements .

My base drum measured outer Ø506mm and more importantly had a inner Ø492mm.

Remove all the hardware from the drum. Once you have built up some bravery. Place the base drum on the table saw and attempt a borderline dangerous maneuver to cut a 42mm wide ring from the drum.

Once your heart rate falls back to normal. Change your shorts then, remove the laminate from the out side of the ring. This should leave you with just the wooden ring. Pull out your inverted table router or as I like to call it the "Inverted Spinning Death Machine" Cut the inside of the ring to make a 4mm x 4mm recess on both the upper and lower edges.

Give the ring a quick sand and its time to get on with the rest of the project.

As I mentioned before the lamp design features 2 apertures. An upper and lower aperture. With each aperture containing 12 leaves to make it operate correctly. Now if you own your own CNC machine this will probably be no problem for you to cut out 24 parts. As for me I had to inflate my friends ego a little to be able to use his CNC. Thus limiting my time I could bare hanging out with him. Before he tried to tell me about the flux capacitor of his expensive new tool..

So in my case we used the CNC to cut out a 15mm plywood template. Then using the template to trace all 24 leaves onto some 0.7mm aluminum sheets.

I then cut each leaf out roughly on the bandsaw leaving a few mm to spare. If you do not have a bandsaw. Firstly, my condolences, bandsaws are awesome and you should probably invest in one. Secondly you can just use a jigsaw....Scrap that, go and be awesome and buy a bandsaw. They are not that expensive.

Using some double sided tape. Attach the rough cut leaves one by one to the 15mm plywood template. Warning! Do not use too much tape. This most probably will lead you to a dramatic movie scene. Where you are down on your knees in front of your garage weeping at the mangled mess of aluminum that was once an aperture leaf.

Using the "Inverted Spinning Death Machine" again. Trim off the excess aluminum using a flush copy bit.

Here is the real sucky bit. You are now going to have to deburr all the leaves with a hand file. If you choose not to do so then there will be a little too much friction and the aperture will not open or close properly. In addition each tiny burr will scrape the hell out of the other leaves and it will look like trash.

Whilst you are deburring all your parts. It is perhaps wise to hit print on your 3d printer. Print out your leaf pins and pilot hole guides.

Once your leaves are all deburred and all your parts are printed. Place the template over each leaf and drill the 2mm holes for the leaf pins. If you look at your leaf pins you will see there are 2 types. A 4mm and 5mm pin. The 4mm pin is for the outer facing side and the 5mm pin for the inner facing side. Clean the gluing area with cleaning alcohol. One by one apply a small amount of super glue to the bottom of each pin. Then fix each pin in position using the 2mm pilot hole as a guide. To speed this process up it is also a good idea to use some activator spray. That way you are not holding each pin for 2 min whilst the glue sets.

The Center Ring is the hidden heart of this design. Its job it it guide the leaf pins and to house the LED strip and cabling.

CNC this part out from some 15mm plywood. Clean up the edges and pin guides with some sandpaper. It is at this point you will realize I did not plan this project from start to finish. No, I was not sure how to mount the LED's and cabling until I had the part in my hand.

So the small modifications are as follows. Divide the ring into 3. Then using the bandsaw cut a 30mm wide by 15mm deep notch into the ring. Being sure to not cut where the pin guides are. Drill a 6mm hole through the side of the ring for 2 of the notches.

This is where the genius comes! Note: My sense of inflated ego here is only a result of having to inflate my friends ego earlier. Using some Ø6mm pipe. Make 3 x 20mm long pipe fittings with an M6 thread on one end and a flare flange on the other. These will be used in combination with the hanging wires (as seen in picture: 9) to run the power through to the LED strip. Dang it! I forgot to say here that you also needed to drill 3 holes in the Outer Ring for these 6mm pipe fittings. Maybe not so genius after all.

Glue the LED strip on in the inside of the center ring and run the positive cable through one hole and the negative cable through the other. I cut a small recess for one power cable to run along the top side of the LED strip. So that it kept things neat and tidy. However you can just glue the cable in to place if you couldn't be bothered.

The Actuator Ring is the moving part to open or close each aperture.

Simply CNC this part out from 4mm plywood and sand to finish.

Wait! I almost for got about the knobs. You are going to have to make 6 of these or in my case 9 cause I may have allegedly screwed up a few.

Get some 12mm aluminum rod and stick it in the end of your drill. Make sure you run around your workshop for 5 min making "pew" "pew" noises, pretending it is some sort of intergalactic pistol. When your wife walks in to ask you about dinner. Pretend nothing weird was going on and tell her you want space cakes for dinner.

Whilst your space cakes are cooking. Take your drill over to the sander and whilst spinning in the drill. Shape the end to your desired profile. To create a polished finish increase the sandpaper grit from 80 -120-240-1000 then finish with 0000 steel wool. To take it further you could also use a polishing compound such as Autosol.

Once you are happy with the polish of your knob. Cut it to a 15mm in length. Then do that process all over again. for the other 5.

To finish, drill a 2mm hole in the back of the knob, approximately10mm deep for the attachment screw.

The Retaining Ring keeps all the parts in place. The retaining ring will hopefully fit nicely into the 2 recessed you cut into the outer ring earlier.

Simply cut this part out of 4mm plywood on the CNC. Give it a lite sand and it's done.

Always test assemble. You wouldn't buy one of those weird new products at the grocery store. Unless you had tasted it on the end of a toothpick. Would you now. This is no different and lucky for me I did this and found a little problem.

• Place the center ring into the middle of the outer ring.
• Layer the leaves on top of the center ring
• Install the actuator ring and adjust the leaf pins to fit.
• Lock the retaining ring into place with some small clamps.
• Try turning the actuator ring in both clockwise and anti-clockwise directions.

Here is where I found my problem. The tolerance of the actuator ring against the outer ring was too small. I needed to remove 2 mm from the diameter of the actuator ring. With a quick spin on the sander we were back in business.

The ceiling mount or as I ended up calling it the "chocolate cake". Is were all the ugliness is hidden.

The chocolate cake is approximately the same diameter as the inner diameter of the aperture. In fact I wasn't sure about the design of this part until I had finished the main lamp assembly. It just so happened that, one of the off cuts from the CNC visually looked the right size. So, I just went with it. The assembly consists 4 layers just like a decadent chocolate cake.

• Layer 1 consists of the 4mm off cut from the CNC which has a diameter of Ø320mm
• Layer 2 is made from 15mm plywood with the same diameter as layer 1. Inside however there is a off center cross pattern, cut to reduce weight but retain strength for the pull switch and cables. The cross is off center to allow the pull switch cable to be in the center of the piece.
• Layer 3 is again in mad from 15mm plywood and is the same outer diameter. However this piece is a ring with an inside diameter Ø250mm
• Layer 4 is the locking ring. Once again made from 15mm plywood with the same outer diameter as all the others. This layer differs however, in that it has an inner diameter of Ø220mm with 4 notches to fit the locking tabs of the ceiling fitting.
• The ceiling fitting consists of a round 15mm plywood plater with a diameter of Ø210mm. Evenly spaced are 4 metal tabs fasten using screws. These tabs match the notches of layer 4.

Once you have made all your layer its time to sandwich them together with some wood glue. The layers are prone to slide, as you clamp them together. Don't do what I did and freak out half way through the gluing process. Screaming and swearing did help emotionally but I'm pretty sure my neighbors now believe there is some sort of dungeon in my garage. Please, use some short nails or screws in-between the layers.

Now, your glue is dry either use a flush copy bit with your router or, if you like your fingers. Use sandpaper to rough sand any excess glue away.

Find some iron-on wood veneer to then apply to the edge of your chocolate cake. Once you have trimmed off the excess its time for a quick drill for your pull switch cable and your mounting wire fittings. If you are happy with how it looks feel free to sand it ready for finish.

I went with a black stain here. Primarily as the parts were not all the same type of wood and black would make them all a uniform color. Truth be told though, it was more to cover up all my bad craftmanship. I applied several coats so all the flaws were hidden and only to the surfaces that were going to be seen.

Once I was happy with the stain. I applied some OSMO hard wax again only to the surfaces you could see. Leaving them to dry over night.

If your wife or partner is anything like mine. They think we need a thousand lamps in every window and on every table. "Borrow" one of those lamps with a pull switch and tear it apart to remove the switch.

Get a certified electrician then to wire up the LED and switch. Now that I have said what I legally need to say. If you are a self certified electricial enthusiast feel free to try wiring it up yourself but do so at your own risk.

I won't go into detail here for legal reasons but here is the gist.

The LED strip was only 24v. So, I decided to run the power through 2 of the 3 hanging wires. One +V and the other -V.

Wait! Before you lose you head about what you just read. It is legal here to do so under 50v. Also know I tested this extensively. Even licking my fingers and holding both the positive and negative wires. I didn't even feel a tickle. Enough said good luck with the wiring.

You are at the point of no return here if you screw this up. Chances are that you will have to start over again. No pressure.

• Glue the center ring in using super glue. Ensure it is positioned exactly center in the outer ring
• Thread the power cables through the 6mm pipe fittings
• Lightly oil each leaf with either cooking oil or thin machine oil.
• Place all the aperture leaves into position
• Fasten the 6 knobs to the actuator ring using some small counter sunk screws
• Fit the actuator ring
• Apply a small amount of wood glue to the retainer ring recess. "Small" is the key word here. If any excess glue gets in mechanism. Your neighbors will most probably hear the screams of angst and pain from your workshop. Forcing them to call for a white padded van to come pick you up. However if you do apply the correct amount of glue. Clamp the retainer ring in place and wait till dry.
• Flip the lamp over and repeat the last 5 steps again.
• Test to see your glorious lamp in action.

Lets set up your lamp and get ready to enjoy romantic dinners again without dam flickering light.

• Fasten the ceiling fitting in place with some screws. Try to make sure you hit a beam with at least one screw so that the lamp does not come plummeting down on someone's head
• Lift your chocolate cake onto the locking tabs and turn it 1/8 of a turn to lock into place.
• Adjust your hanging wires using a spirit level

The las t and final step is. To take a step back and realize you just built this amazing lamp. Congratulations to you. It's time to plug that bad boy in and start playing with your new toy.

Thanks for reading you rock!