{"id":78,"date":"2008-12-22T13:56:56","date_gmt":"2008-12-22T13:56:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.bolis.com\/testwp\/story\/art-deco-led-desk-lamp\/"},"modified":"2017-01-24T01:01:32","modified_gmt":"2017-01-24T01:01:32","slug":"art-deco-led-desk-lamp","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.bolis.com\/amillar\/art-deco-led-desk-lamp\/","title":{"rendered":"Art deco LED desk lamp"},"content":{"rendered":"
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\"Art<\/a>
Art Deco LED desk lamp<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

I built a stylish energy-efficient desk lamp, entirely from scratch. I have always enjoyed Art Deco and Machine Age industrial styling, and was inspired to use it for the lamp when my son and I were watching Batman, the Animated Series<\/a>. A desk lamp worthy of Wayne Manor was in order.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

CCFL<\/h3>\n
\"Broken
\nBroken scanner<\/a><\/div>\n

The thing that originally prompted me to build a lamp was a broken computer scanner. I took it apart and removed the cold-cathode fluorescent light, and thought to myself “this would make a cool lamp”. And efficient too; putting out a lot of light at only about 5 watts as I recall.<\/p>\n

I envisioned a long thin tube light at the end of an arm, which could be swiveled and positioned as desired over the desk. I made a shade for the tube from copper plumbing pipe. The CCFL inverter would be placed in the base of the lamp, along with a 12v power adapter and a few yellow LEDs to make the base glow.<\/p>\n

\"CopperCopper shade<\/a><\/div>\n
\"CopperCopper shade<\/a><\/div>\n
\"lightlight test<\/a><\/div>\n

Base<\/h3>\n
\"Base
\nBase model<\/a><\/div>\n

As in most of my projects, I started the base with some sketches and then a cardboard model. I built it from acrylic plastic, cut on the table saw and bent by heating with the heat gun. I sanded it with fine sand paper, to change the gloss finish to a matte. Then I painted it with black vinyl dye.<\/p>\n

Although it looks more like an Art Deco radio than a lamp, the result is still pretty good I think. It was just big enough to fit the 12v power supply, the CCFL inverter, a power switch and a few LEDs. Only one problem: it weighs nothing. Not good for the base of a lamp with metal arms and head. A heavy piece of steel in the bottom solved that.<\/p>\n

\"Forming
\nForming base<\/a><\/div>\n
\"Base
\nBase constructed<\/a><\/div>\n
<\/div>\n

Arm<\/h3>\n
\"Joints\"
\nJoints<\/a><\/div>\n

I built the arm using 3\/8″ chrome-plated copper pipe. The sections are connected by ball joints made from short bolts, with the heads rounded off using a file in the drill press. I first thought I needed to tap the tubes for the bolts. Then I found the copper was so soft the bolts would tap themselves.<\/p>\n

\"Final
\nFinal arm<\/a><\/div>\n

The relatively-small contact area of the ball joints makes them somewhat weak. This means the lamp shade should be as light as possible.<\/p>\n

First assembly<\/h3>\n

Once I had the base, arms, and CCFL lamp built, I assembled them together and soldered the CCFL bulb on the end of the wires running through the arms, to the CCFL inverter in the base. First try: Oh no! It didn’t work. The tube just glowed dimly on each end.<\/p>\n

I checked all the connections; no help. I disassembled it and connected the tube back directly to the inverter. It worked. Huh?!?! I determined there was nothing wrong with any of the individual parts or wires; they just didn’t work together. I could not get the lamp to work with the inverter in the base, away from the tube.<\/p>\n

Argh! Frustrated, I set the project aside for quite a few months.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I built a stylish energy-efficient desk lamp, entirely from scratch. I have always enjoyed Art Deco and Machine Age industrial styling, and was inspired to use it for the lamp when my son and I were watching Batman, the Animated Series. A desk lamp worthy of Wayne Manor was in order. CCFL Broken scanner The … Continue reading “Art deco LED desk lamp”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[7,9,4],"class_list":["post-78","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-project","tag-electronics","tag-lighting","tag-workshop"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.bolis.com\/amillar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/78","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.bolis.com\/amillar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.bolis.com\/amillar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.bolis.com\/amillar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.bolis.com\/amillar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=78"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"http:\/\/www.bolis.com\/amillar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/78\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":510,"href":"http:\/\/www.bolis.com\/amillar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/78\/revisions\/510"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.bolis.com\/amillar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=78"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.bolis.com\/amillar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=78"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.bolis.com\/amillar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=78"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}