Laser Cut Lights

A Digital Fabrication Project

Illustrations by Cal Brackin

I live in Boulder, Colorado in a pretty small house and when I moved in there were these giant ball lights reminiscent of college dorm rooms. They were old and torn and just pretty ugly and my wife and I wanted an upgrade that we could design ourselves. We already had the cables and bulbs from the ball lights and buying fixtures can get pricey.

My idea was to create a 6 sided box light, patterned, and with paper on the inside to diffuse the light. Many laser cut lights let the full bulb light shine through patterns and they make funky shadows on the walls… we didn’t want that. We wanted to make three of these fixtures.

Here are the steps I took to create these lights:

1. Makercase to build the shape
2. Google to find a pattern
3. Photoshop to edit the pattern
4. Illustrator To vectorize & merge pattern to panels
5. Lasercutting at the local maker space BLDG 61

Here are the supplies I used….

Let’s check out some of the steps I used to make these lights:

First, I went onto Makercase to design the shape of my fixtures. The size limitation was set by the sheets of plywood we use at the makerspace we use, which were 24”x 18”. So we had to make our pieces fit on those sheets. In Makercase, I specified Finger joints so they could all fit together. I also created another file with flat edges and I’ll explain why in a bit. Then I downloaded the files in .svg.

Then, I went onto Google and searched for a pattern that I liked. I downloaded the image and brought it into Photoshop to increase the contrast and black lines so that vectorizing the pattern in illustrator went smoothly.

I brought the pattern files into Illustrator. I did an Image Trace of the lines to turn them into vector lines. Vector lines allow the laser cutter to follow these lines. Then I brought in my panels shapes with both finger joints and flat edges. I got rid of all the unnecessary images so I could just copy and paste the panels I needed, which were the top, bottom, and sides.

I needed to make sure that my pattern fits within my panel, so I just put the flat edge in to make a boundary that my pattern fits in.

I used the shape builder tool to make the pattern fit within the boundary. Select it all and then draw over the shape you want to stitch together. It takes a bit of time, but when you are done you can ditch the leftover stuff and have everything woven into one shape.

I needed to make the top be able to carry a bit more of the weight so I added solid bands to reinforce it. I also needed to be able to string a bulb through a hole on the top. I didn’t measure this and later on, I had to widen the hole at home.

I put the shape files onto sheets that were sized at 24”x18” and then made all the lines be .02”, which helps the laser cutter know that it needs to cut through the entire piece of wood.

I sent in my files to my local maker space in Boulder at BLDG 61 located in the library. They cut it out and I picked them up later. Awesome.

I gathered my supplies to put them together: panels, Elmer’s glue, super glue, blue tape, new lightbulbs for inside fixtures, and this really thin paper by Borden and Riley Paper Co. Sun-Glo No. SG-35 8lb. Thumbnail paper. Some call it onionskin apparently.

I cut the paper out by tracing along the edges of the panels. Then, I glued the paper onto just the bottom panel. I put the shapes together piece by piece, using blue tape to hold them together. I made sure the top piece was taped well so I could turn it on its sides and glue the rest of the paper in. I did not glue paper on the top.

I superglued all the edges with the exception of the bottom piece. I wanted to be able to get inside the fixture to change so I cut little strips of leather and glued magnets to one side and on two spots of light. The little strips and magnets hold the bottom on.

With the light strung through and the bottom piece on they were complete.

In the end, they look great, definitely an upgrade, and provide very nice dappled light.

Big thanks to the folks at Bldg 61 for their instruction, resources, and providing services in creative ways during COVID.