INDN 212: Problem Solving...

Now I'm really getting into the nitty-gritty of the work that needs to all be put together. I have all my pieces, all of them just need to fit together. This is where things get a little bit tricky, as some of the components don't quite fit the way I intended. The end "wing" components had some issues with the height after I decided to slope that part of the main form, so what I decided to do to combat that was to have the individual segments step down so that the amount of light shining up the wall would also decrease.

The routing that I did had to be slightly deepened to make sure the LEDS fit, but other than that, the two halves only needed a bit of sanding to make sure they fit together nice and straight.

I had to glue the separate wings together using small slices of wood to separate the segments, which ended up being a little bit unsightly, so I decided to fill in the gaps between the segments with white plasticine to cover the gaps. It ended up looking like grouting, which is fantastic. It just looked so right! I felt really resourceful using that material as a filler.

Merging the two sections brought its own problems. The angle of the glowing section was marginally off, so I had to sand off a bit more of it to make sure it fit okay and yet still covered the routing for the LED strips.

To fit my wiring in, I routed out the back section with a small gap for the wires to sit in. After doing it, I realised I had made a huge mistake by routing all the way through. Sadly it was an irreparable mistake, so I just decided to roll with it. Felt a bit stupid after that. Not thinking ahead like I should.

An issue that arose pretty quickly after gluing the wings to the main section was that the small area where they were held together just wasn't enough to keep them held strong, and the glue had started to give way. So, the solution to that, short of putting nails into my project was to provide some support. So, I trimmed some pieces of the same acrylic and used them as supports for the wings. All of this is on the back, so you won't see it anyway.

Considering I wanted to hang my project on the wall, I really needed a way to actually hang it on the wall, so I needed to make some hook points. I made little screw-locks, so that the light would be mounted near-flush with the wall. I made some little acrylic covers for the holes as well.

On a recommendation by my tutor, I decided to also make a diffuser for the light, as the light was dangerously bright, and it also looked a little unfinished. So I handmade the diffuser out of a piece of acrylic, sloped the sides, and made sure it would fit in the form. It looks much better now, although sadly once I put the diffuser in, soon after, one of the LEDs in my strip went dim and yellow, which I assume means it was either damaged or blown.

The power cord coming out the back was tricky, as my wiring wasn't the best. This led to a little light stuttering is I twisted the power cord just a little bit, so I plugged the hole with some more plasticine to make sure the power cable couldn't wiggle around. I also bent the power cord so that when it came out the back, it would not take up too much space between the light and the wall.