Making a ball lamp from isolon
The ball-shaped lamp fits perfectly into a young sportsman's room. It is quite possible to make it yourself, if you use modern material - isolon.
Peculiarities
Izolon - the main material used to construct a ball lamp, is an insulating layer that has different thicknesses and can be either white or foil.
As a rule, sheets are used to create decorative elements, the thickness of which is 2 millimeters. They are attached either directly to the finished plafond, or to the coupling of the lighting device.
It should also be added that for a luminaire, a sewn isolon is more suitable, which has undergone special processing during production. An unstitched isolon will cost less, but its characteristics will not be very good either. A ball lamp made of insulating material can be either football or basketball - the choice is made depending on the preference of the owner of the room.
Izolon will not light up or melt, but under the influence of too high temperatures it can change its shape or stick together, therefore it is recommended to use LED bulbs with a power of up to 7 watts for the lighting device. Individual parts can be fixed either with a hot glue gun or with ordinary threads. It will be possible to give the required tone to the material only with an aerosol or acrylic paints, since it does not absorb other compounds.
Tools and materials
To create a modern luminaire that resembles a soccer ball, you need sheets of white and black isolon. The white material is sold ready-made, and to obtain a dark shade, you will have to pre-treat the sheets with acrylic paint of the required shade.
It will be more convenient to cut templates from plain cardboard, and green foamiran is useful for some decorative details. A round shade is used as a basis for the luminaire. With the help of a hair dryer, individual parts can be rounded. Finally, you will need a pencil with scissors, a ruler, and a glue gun with spare refills to get the job done successfully.
How to do it?
A master class on making a lamp in the form of a soccer ball with your own hands requires you to pre-make two patterns. The first one looks like a pentagon with sides of 3 centimeters, and the second template is a hexagon, the sides of which are also 3 centimeters. Next, according to the template, 19 hexagons should be cut out of the white isolon, and 12 pentagons from the painted black isolon. When shaping the soccer ball, it will be necessary to fix the white parts on the black ones.
Before starting the connection of individual parts, each isolone piece is warmed up by a hairdryer, and a small depression is formed in its middle. All components are glued directly to the shade with a glue gun.
The gluing should start at the top in the very center and gradually work downward.
Stripes with teeth are cut from green foamiran, which will symbolize grass. These parts are glued to the bottom of the luminaire. The work is completed by installing an energy-saving light bulb, connecting a wire, plug and switch.
Separately, it should be explained how you can make black from white isolon. First of all, in the store it is still worth looking for ready-made polyethylene foam. Since black is the base shade, there shouldn't be any special problems with this.
In that case, when the desired shade is missing, you will have to paint over the white sheets yourself. A can is ideal for this purpose. This paint dries quickly and is easy to spread over the surface. However, the consumption of the coloring material is too high, in addition, during the transportation of the luminaire, dried particles may crumble.
Another way to paint Isolon sheets is to use acrylic enamel. The substance, evenly lying on the surface, is highly resistant, and therefore does not crumble for many years. The only thing is that you can only apply enamel with a spray gun, since the roller forms a too thick layer, and a brush is generally not suitable for this task.
Basically, it is possible to paint isolon sheets with rubber paint. The coating will not crack for many years and will survive various types of impact, including mechanical ones. It should be borne in mind, however, that the surface turns out to be matte, and therefore, if necessary, the product will have to be additionally varnished for a glossy shine. Some masters use car enamel for painting isolon, but its cost, like consumption, is very high.
It is also necessary to understand how the lighting element itself is assembled, if necessary. First of all, the ring is removed from the chuck and either hot glue or superglue is fixed on the top of the sleeve. Next, you will need to disassemble the cartridge in order to connect the wire to it. This can be done using a flat screwdriver, which is guided into the special grooves on both sides of the cartridge. By sliding the latches, you can detach the cartridge cover.
The ends of the wires are stripped by removing the insulating material. It is customary to leave from a centimeter to one and a half centimeters of bare wiring. In the next step, the ends of the wires are inserted into the holes provided for this in the upper part of the cartridge and secured by squeezing the fastening elements.
The chuck cover slides back on and locks in securely. Upon completion, the sleeve with the ring already connected is passed through the wire and screwed onto the cartridge cover.Do not grip the elements too tightly, as the ring may break.
Next, see a do-it-yourself workshop on making a ball lamp from an isolon.
