The Penguin Lamp project is almost done. Just electricity, automation and two name plates (Kowalski and Private). The goal is to get that done in the next two weeks.
I spun on design ideas for Private for several months. Eventually, I decided on a lamp with some type of translucent umbrellas. I took several missteps on the umbrellas. I did some 3D design and printing. Then I thought I would try to make my first mold and resin poor with nothing looking as I wanted (the resin looked horrible, but I think I could have solved those issues). I ended up thinking I could take actual cocktail umbrellas (the original inspiration) and coat them in clear resin. So, I bought a lot, and applied several coats of resin with a brush and hit them with a UV Led light. It was a fairly involved production.
I’m not thrilled with my mounting solution. I designed a little disk that could be hot melted onto the toothpick. At a minimum I should have painted them brown, but the mounting needed to be a bit more discrete.
After all the challenges with the lamp, I also had issues figuring out the stage. It one point, I considered hanging him and the lamp being a parachute. I ended up finding a commercial 3D model of a carousel. My first plan was to take the base and slice everything off, but the model was already cut apart and had the bottom in four pieces with a hole in the center. But, the top part of the carousel, with the flag, was a round piece. With some resizing, I made it fit. Printed, glued and painted. I think it looks pretty good.
Like Kowalski, I suspended the stage with wire. This, I believe is a bad idea. Getting the lengths right is difficult. And, I’m not convinced they’ll hold. The penguins are also top heavy, so they can flip over. I suspect after some wind, I’ll find them upside down. When I do the name tags, I might try to add some weight at the bottom. For now, I’ll lot time and mother nature point out whether or not it is enough.
As you can see from the photos, I’ve also started mounting the lamps on the patio. They are all up, no power yet. I have a plan for that and just need to spend some time going up and down a ladder to get it done.