Hi, this is Wayne again with a topic “Darbin Orvar: Building an Articulating LED Task Lamp”.
Hi guys, i’m lynn from the jarbot orbee youtube channel and today i’m going to make this articulating led task lamp. It’S really awesome, so this project is made with a baltic birch plywood and you can articulate and move each of the sections and you can switch out the light panel here because it’s attached with magnets, so let’s get building so i started with planning up design. This is my tinker corner where i like to do: electronics and design work, and i’ve built a couple of different projects for this area. Now i’ve been wanting a bright task light here for quite some time, and i really wanted something that was very flexible for different jobs. I begin with checking over my led strips and measuring out how large i want the light you can cut. These led strips every three lights on the copper section, so i decided to make my light panel nine lights wide and then i started cutting up a whole bunch of strips 18 to be precise and just getting an idea of what it’s going to look like now. For the body i’m using some baltic birch plywood, so just cutting up some sections here on the table saw and some shorter pieces here on the miter saw.
The whole body is made up of these narrow sections that connect together. So once i had them all cut up, i rounded the corners, so i have both half inch as well as quarter inch. Plywood sections cut up because the half inch piece of plywood fits in the center and on both sides. It connects to a quarter inch piece and that’s secured with a knob, then in order to get the knob through i’m drilling a hole in each and i’ve got the drill press set up with a small jig here. So i need a couple of knobs to connect. The sections together now there are many ways to make knobs, but this time i decided to make some octagons using angle bisecting with a compass and a straight edge.
Then each knob needs a hole in the center, so i can put a bolt through so drilling. Those first a shallow large hole and then a smaller hole all the way through, and then i simply cut each one out on the bandsaw, a little sanding and a little banging to inset each bolt into each knob. Now, let’s move on to attaching the strip lights to the plywood panel here and i’m simply removing the tape on the back side and sticking them in a row on the corners on the panel. I’M going to glue down some magnets so just marking out where they’ll be going, then i’m stripping some wire and hot gluing it down pretending all the negatives on one side and all the positives on the other, then i cut up a whole bunch of small wire And i’m soldering a piece from each connection point to the long wire on the side.
So, let’s see if it works and there you go okay. So, let’s move on to the magnets now magnets play two roles in this build. First of all, i’m gluing one in each corner on the lighting panel and just mixing up some epoxy here, and this is because i want to attach a piece of this acrylic sheet over the lights to provide some protection. So i’ve got some regular washers here that i’ve covered with contact cement, so just attaching those to the panel also adding some washers on the other side for a clean look and that will hold the panel in place quite nicely.
Now to the second use of the magnets, i want the lighting panel to be removable quite easily, so you could switch panels if you wanted to so i figured imagine if this is the back side of the lighting panel and we have the wires coming up from The front what if those are soldered to a few magnets embedded in wood here, then i could make a second magnet block connected to wires and once that block would be connected to the arms and the base. So i started with drilling some holes in a small piece of wood: first, a shallow hole and then a smaller hole all the way through then i pre-tinned some wires and soldered them to the magnets. Then i threaded the wire through the wood and gently tapped, the magnet in place and then repeated, and here you can see the two coming together now, let’s move on to the parts connecting the arms to the panel and the arms to the wall. So imagine this is the lighting panel and on top here i have a piece of plywood and connected to that an upright piece of plywood with rounded corners with a hole in the center. That way the arms can connect and be secured with a knob. So i’ve got two pieces of plywood here and i’m just attaching one to the middle of the other. Now imagine this is the wall and i have a piece of wood connected to the wall, a piece on top of that connected with a smooth bolt that way.
The top piece can move in different directions, and on top of that i have the same design as the one connected to the lighting panel. So i’m just gluing some plywood together here then sketching out some smooth corners, so the piece can move freely here. It is cut to size, then i have a hole through both of them and they connect with a bolt a little fine adjustment on the bandsaw outside and it’s nice and smooth. So now i’m gluing on the connecting section to the light panel with some contact cement and i’m just finding the center here. Okay, now, let’s connect the wiring so drilling a hole through the panel and feeding the wires connected to the magnet block through then soldering.
The negative wire to the negative side and the positive to the positive side then to protect the plywood, i’m simply putting on some shellac, which is great because it dries so quickly and it’s time to assemble. The whole thing here is the hardware, and here are all the plywood pieces. Then it’s just a matter of putting the whole thing together.
Okay and it’s really cool – you can move it in all sorts of ways almost feels a bit like a toy, so i’ve got the magnet connection hot glued on here and now i need to connect the wires to the lamp, so i’m marking out some space for Some tiny eyelet hooks, then just pre-drilling tiny little holes and attaching two on each section to hold the wire in place and then just threading it through, and i spun the wire first to make it a little neater. Well, there are a couple of things about this lamp that i really like that i want to point out, and that is first of all, how it swivels either from side to side, or you can articulate it up and down depending on how you want it, you Can easily put on this section here on the wall or on the desk or wherever you need it. You can also remove a section if you’d, like you, can add on to them.
Making this whole thing larger and bigger. You can also make them smaller or whatever. Another cool thing is that the wiring here is connected with magnets, so you can easily switch out this panel. If you have another one like here, i have a test one, so i can switch that one out for this.
One without doing any soldering, so it’s really easy to put on a larger one or smaller one or whatever. It is that you want so yeah. I think this is going to come in really handy, uh, really quite useful.
So i’m lynne don’t forget to check out my youtube channel darwinorver for lots, more projects and yeah. Otherwise, thank you guys. So much for watching and i’ll see you soon bye.
My foreign .