This chandelier keeps the light source hidden and uses fiber optics to illuminate the acrylic diffusers. It’s the second attempt [TheCreator] has made at building his own. Bother projects are interesting in their own way.
The first attempt used marbles as diffusers and had a much different look to it. This time around he’s using what he calls acrylic dowels. They’re not round, but square (which is why we’re not sure dowel is the right term), and he says they work better than marbles for several reasons. The marbles weren’t very heavy so they didn’t really weigh down the glass fibers to keep then straight. They were also difficult to attach to the fibers and prone to breakage.
To attach the dowels he drilled a hole in the end and epoxied a fiber optic strand in place. To direct light into the other end of the filament he built his own frustum (a pyramid with the tip cut off) of inward facing mirror. This helps to focus what is coming from the RGB LEDs in the appropriate direction so that as much light as possible makes it into the fibers.
He didn’t really give any final thoughts so we wonder if it puts out enough light for his needs. We’re sure that if it’s purely a mood piece he’s satisfied.
Did you mean “both her” ? for bother ?
I think Mike meant that I didn’t “bother”. The Chandelier is mainly visible when it is dark. It cast’s a nice glow and the top of the enclosure was placed about 3/4″from the ceiling to disperse light that failed to transfer into the filaments. It is more for mood lighting, at parties and such. Even with the 10 – 3 Watt LED’s it still only produces and ambient glow. More pictures and video of the python script running the unit can be found Here .
Once I install the automated under stair lighting it will really set the mood for the room.
looks cool. i hope he has aux analog in! lol
“Light Guide Techniques Using LED Lamps” by Agilent has some pretty good info. For fiber optics they recommend precision drilling a hole in the LED and using a clear epoxy to attach the fiber optics (page 19 of the PDF).
I’ve been thinking of making something similar to this but was probably going to do something brighter and more diffused for general lighting.
The problem with that DexW is there are over 150 filaments and only 10 3-watt LED’s. That is why i had to make the <a href="http://apexlogic.net/wp-content/uploads/2012/05/IMG_2674.jpg"frustum . However, In theory this would have been a great idea. More light transfer and you could also make the filaments individually addressable. Maybe on version 3 ;)
About that link…”page not found”
crap…if someone could throw the last bracket “>” and end link tag that would be cool. thanks
http://apexlogic.net/wp-content/uploads/2012/05/IMG_2674.jpg
This is the actual link. My bad.