Floor Lamps

When I eventually have my galactic empire, our fluorescent lighting needs will be well accommodated! Designed around a 100mm drain pipe, but with a sci-fi industrial twist. The core is a simple T8 tube with magnetic ballast. Flat white on the inside, matte black on the out, and a heavy frost diffuser over the front slit. The back is transparent to allow light to reflect off the wall behind and illuminate the room with a soft glow.

If I were to do this again, I would use an electronic ballast for faster ignition. I’d also like to use an array of individually addressable LEDs behind the slit. These could be controlled by time, temperature, music, or even the weather. Some metal trim pieces would also work to compliment the titanium bolts.

The patterns for the bases were designed in cad, cut on the band saw, and the circular pieces were turned on a lathe. The tube openings were designed in cad, and cut on my friend Ronnie's CNC machine. We used vectric aspire and nc-studio for the tool path creation and machine operation. I really would have liked to cut everything on the CNC machine but it wasn't available.

Jigging the tube in the cnc machine was the hardest part of the whole project. Since the whole tube was longer then the Y travel, the cut was stopped and the whole piece slid down. To re-register, a tool blank the same diameter as the cutter was used.