Stand-alone diffused lamp

thingiverse

I'm a big fan of a fantastic bar/grill that's conveniently located right across the street from my house. One thing that stands out at this popular watering hole is their row of 3 lights equipped with standard incandescent light bulbs. Unfortunately, I found these lights to be a bit too harsh for my taste, so I requested permission from the management if I could design some diffusers to tone down the brightness. They agreed, and I got started on creating my initial prototype. This first version was designed specifically with adjustable shutters in mind - a feature that will allow patrons to fine-tune the light level to their liking. Before moving forward, however, I needed to test the diffuser's effectiveness, so I set up a temporary stand to house it and hooked it up to ensure everything worked smoothly. As luck would have it, I was impressed enough with the results to repurpose my prototype as a standalone light fixture in my home! To achieve this, I had to navigate a slight learning curve related to scaling my CAD designs using metric units. Experimenting with different scaling factors led me to conclude that the best result I could get was to scale up my STL file by 25% - and I achieved an excellent fit when using a LED bulb model (E27-WW8W-T). To see more images of this DIY project in action, check out my Flickr photostream at https://www.flickr.com/gp/cleatus_cobb/55894u.