{"id":2584,"date":"2015-10-15T23:21:31","date_gmt":"2015-10-15T20:21:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/9v.lt\/blog\/?p=2584"},"modified":"2023-01-30T23:07:57","modified_gmt":"2023-01-30T21:07:57","slug":"improved-cd-lamp","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/9v.lt\/blog\/improved-cd-lamp\/","title":{"rendered":"Improved CD Lamp"},"content":{"rendered":"

Hello again :) the other day I finished assembling an improved version of a CD lamp which I made before. I’ve been collecting cd’s to be thrown out for like a year and I collected quite a stack. Had few left from my previous attempt<\/a>, it was ok, but not good. That previous article I wrote in Lithuanian language, can’t remember why, it was probably easier for me at that time :D
\nAnyway, the new version I made is more than a meter high and uses RGB LED strip. I figured it’s not going to be used to light up a room, so I made it as a decoration instead and I think I got it really good… still not perfect, but… that’ll do pig :) I didn’t count how many CD’s I got stacked, but there should be around 680 of them… so apparently it takes 680 CD’s to have a 62cm tower.
\nThe whole cost of this was about 55\u20ac. The most costly part was the LED RGB strip – 14\u20ac.
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\nHere’s how it looks like finished:<\/p>\n

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So now that I got your attention, here’s how I did it.<\/p>\n

For this lamp I needed a custom base, I couldn’t use a metal can like before, so I got some plywood, cut out circles and glued them together.<\/p>\n

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Of course it didn’t look smooth, so I sanded the corners down to make them flat.<\/p>\n

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Next I glued the CD’s together, I did it in separate blocks, and then glued those blocks to get a solid tower. Used long-setting transparent glue, so I have time to adjust it and simply used weights to push them down.<\/p>\n

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Once I got the whole tower glued, I had to let it set for a few days. In the mean time I began working on the top and the base. At this time it was only glued together and sanded down. So I centered a CD on the whole block of plywood and drew a circle where I’d cut out a hole. Here I made a mistake by gluing whole surface when I only needed to glue the edges. It would of been much easier to cut out a hole that way…<\/p>\n

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I made my design so I can easily disassemble it later if I need to do maintenance, like replacing a transformer or other electronic components, so I didn’t use glue where I didn’t have to. Therefore I cut through the base and used one layer of plywood to have a bottom cover, which is held together with screws.<\/p>\n

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I did the same with the top, but I glued the top shut.<\/p>\n

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The hole I cut in the base was a bit larger than a CD, so I can fit a transformer and an RGB controller in there, so I needed to somehow hold that whole stack of CD’s (which weights quite a lot) on top of everything, for that I used some things I don’t know how to call from a furniture department.<\/p>\n

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Now I have a top and a base half done. Next thing I did was drilling holes through them. I needed to drill the holes on the sides, so I can have it as a reinforcement as well as a part of the design, as they would pull the CD’s together holding them in place even tighter as I screw the aluminum. It would of been more accurate if I had a drill stand… when I drilled the holes I enlarged a bit one side so I can hammer in the nuts to hold aluminum bars.<\/p>\n

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Finally that I drilled holes for aluminum bars, I proceeded to fill the gaps between plywood layers around the blocks to make a smoother surface.<\/p>\n

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Now those two parts were ready for painting. I used brown spray paint. I used a lot of paint on the top so that I had a glossy and smooth, glass-like surface.<\/p>\n

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Ok, so the top and the base is now fully finished. I can cut up aluminum bars and make a thread like a screw. I used 6mm aluminum bars.<\/p>\n

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Setting those aside, I brought the tower home to assemble electronics. I could have used a 12v plug for the RGB controller and save space, but I wanted to have it all in one place which was inside the lamp and only have a wire that comes out of it for convenience. I bought 3m of RGB LED strip to have it on all four sides and glued it on a thick wire to have some base, as it turned out I had to use some force and twisting to get the whole thing inside of a CD tower. Would of been easier if I had enlarged the middle like I had done previously building the first version.<\/p>\n

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Now I have it all ready for the final assembly. I put in the transformer and the RGB controlled (was a tight fit!), connected it to the CD tower, drilled a hole on the side of a base for the wire, screwed in the aluminum bars and put the top on. To screw the top I used a nut with one side closed and a washer below the nut. For the bottom I used rubber feet.
\nAnd this is how it looked fully assembled:<\/p>\n

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It may look a bit skewed, and it is a little. CD tower looks bent, I didn’t align the CD’s properly, but it’s hard to notice. However the bars can be seen as skewed, that’s ugly but I had to drill those holes by hand as I didn’t have any drill stand… though I am happy with the end result, it’s quite impressive.<\/p>\n

Thanks for reading :)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Hello again :) the other day I finished assembling an improved version of a CD<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2586,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[751,9],"tags":[944,89,945],"class_list":["post-2584","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-hardware","category-projects","tag-cd-lamp","tag-led","tag-rgb"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/9v.lt\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2584","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/9v.lt\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/9v.lt\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/9v.lt\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/9v.lt\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2584"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/9v.lt\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2584\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/9v.lt\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2586"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/9v.lt\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2584"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/9v.lt\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2584"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/9v.lt\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2584"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}