Color changing lava lamp

[Jeremy Blakesley]

Hi all,

I just joined the forum.  Wanted to let people know that I am working on a color changing lava lamp.  Mine will be called the Fire Light.  I'm hoping to get it on kickstarter soon.  I have a working prototype running now.  I'm also building custom, heavy duty steel bases for them.  I'm in the process of finding parts suppliers and getting costs for the parts.  Just wanted to see if there was any interest in this.  I am working now on getting 3 or 4 different prototype designs of bases built so that I can put together a video for kickstarter.  I'll get some pictures posted soon.  I am having a problem with my phone camera not capturing the colors very well.  I'm not sure how I'll deal with that when I try to make a video.

 

jb

[Arne]

if you need any help in when in comes to painting or electronics feel free to ask, I have some rudimentary knowledge and getting better every day :) passions rule!

[Jeremy Blakesley]

It would be possible to add fluorescent/uv reactive paint as an option.  I'll iron out paint choices as I get closer to getting the kickstarter campaign running.

[Jeremy Blakesley]

So I started getting some shop tools so I can build my lamps.  I already had the cnc plamsa cutter.  I got a metal lathe and a smallish metal cutting bandsaw from Grizzly delivered Tuesday.  Got a new bench grinder too.

A short video of a test cut with my new bandsaw:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SJwLFhl-2Io

[Jeremy Blakesley]

Some more progress today.  After months of design and communicating back and forth with the bottle company, my sample mold and run of sample bottles are under way.  Got the PO signed and sent to Phoenix packaging today.  Should have the samples in about a month.  I hope they come out ok.  They are going to be borosilicate glass.  Not the cheapest bottles, but should be worth the cost.

In the mean time, I've been working on the control circuit board design.  Here's an early prototype board I made at home.  This isn't even close to the final design.

[VOXul]

Boss level

Excellent to see this advancing so well. I am at the ready to see the protos start rolling!

[Jeremy Blakesley]

I'm ready too.  The steps just take a while.  Hopefully soon after I receive the sample bottles I'll be able to get my kickstarter video made.

[Jeremy Blakesley]

Well, they take forever, but I finally got a picture of my bottle.  The first one from the manufacturer.  They said they had a problem at first getting the neck to come out right.  They had to change something in their mold or blowing process.  They say I should have my run of samples in a couple of weeks.  I hope they have the dimensions right.  I've got the heater control circuit built as well.  It'll be pulse width modulation with a potentiometer knob for adjustment.  I'm still truckin' toward the goal.

[Jeremy Blakesley]

I'm back with a long over due progress report.  Things have been progressing slowly, mostly because of the bottles.  Basically, the company I was working with wasted a good six months of my time, saying they could make the bottles the way I wanted, but could not in the end.  The picture in the last post shows a bottle they made, which had the top too tall, preventing my outer cap from fitting.  They re-made the mold, but other parts weren't right still.  I had to go somewhere else.  I am working with a new company, and they are able to get it mostly right.  I just received the first run of sample bottles from them this week.  They are usable for now.  I want to tweak one or two small things about it in the future, though.

I have my first three alpha prototypes built.  I am now about to start building the beta prototypes which will go in my kickstarter video.  There are a few things that will be refined between the alpha and beta models, and more details will be tweaked when production actually starts. 

Here are some pics showing the colors.  I still don't have a good way to get video actually showing the colors change, but each lamp will do all the colors.

Abalone flames:

Controller boxes containing the power supply, pwm heater control, and Bluetooth for the phone app.  There will be a couple buttons for color controls added, for when you don't have Bluetooth connected.

[Critter]

Way to go man!! Love your perseverence!!!

[Jeremy Blakesley]

Thanks!  It's hard to believe I've been messing with this thing just over a year now.  It'll all come together soon.

[Alfred]

Impressive. I can't wait to see what the betas look like!

[Keith]

Sweet!