This project is for a custom glitter lamp that can either accommodate an existing glitter vial or one that you've made from scratch yourself. The base contains a gu10 lamp holder for an LED gu10 lamp, which you can either use a standard LED lamper. you can hack it to slightly lower power for longer life and it creates this very gentle flow of glitter with a bright source of pinpoints of light from the LEDs that casts lots of patterns around the room and it is very subtle and very low power. Let's take a closer look at this on the bench, back at the bench and let's explore the quite complicated world of glitter lamps because you'd think that a glitter lamp is very simple. It's glitter floating water and it's going to be so easy to do. but in reality, plastic of the optical cords required for glitter is actually very heavy. You tend to think of plastic bottles being lighter than water because you see them floating in the sea. in reality the ones you're seeing floating of air pockets in them. the rest of the plastic is at the bottom of the ocean. Unfortunately, even in that high density salty water and that's where you have to actually balance the liquid by adding salts chemical salts to it to make it a lot denser to support the weight of the liquid. And when you do so, the commercial glitter lamps like this one, you'll see that Glitter is all kind of floating at the top here. The reason for that is because as it heats up under the heat of the classic tungsten lamp, the vial of liquid gets so hot that the liquid expands and it changes the density. So the glitter will initially start at the top, but once it's hot enough, it will then get into motion and if it gets too hot, it will actually settle at the bottom. So if you want to use an LED lamp instead and this project involves using Gu10 lamps, LED lamps have been slightly modified in some instances then you're going to have to change that and that involves taking the top off the glitter lamp, noting it's quite a saturated unpleasant dissolution inside. and if you peel this aluminum top off, your fingers are over bung underneath and if you remove the rubber bone, you can then add Drip by drip water just to gradually nudge that down to the point that when the vial is at room temperature and gets Disturbed, it takes a very long time to actually all settle back to the top. That will make it a lot easier. For the low temperature given off by LED lamps, it does involve a bit of fine tuning. The upside of the lower temperature is that although it still moves the glitter, it's much slower because with the tungsten lamp, you tend to get quite a surging motion and it's very sparkly, but not too subtle. The easiest fix is to take your standard glitter lamp base with a oh, hold on, where's a light? Shine light down into it with a little small Es SES lamp holder in it and instead of the I think this is 25 watt, this one's rated at. Instead of the tungsten lamp in it, you can put in an LED lamp, but to make it fit in, you're going to have to find one that is the same sort of height because this is fairly close to that liquid jar in this case. I Broke the plastic cap off the end of one of these lamps and it is 5.5 watt. I Reduced it down in power to about three Watts just by chopping one of the little current setting resistors here that's found on this style of lamp and to reduce it to 3.2 Watts Uh, things more as if. Note: When you do that, you're exposing live connections and it means if someone took the bottle out and broke their finger down inside, they could potentially touch. Live Connections Not necessarily a good thing. Here is my alternative now: I Want to point out that I 3D printed a lot of components for this, but you don't need a 3D printer to do a similar project. You could use anything you can find. It'd be a similar sort of structure to actually support the bottle. At the end of the video I Shall also mention I shall describe what I've done to actually make these from scratch. calcium nitrate. That's what I've used to make these from scratch. So in the description this video down below, you will find four open scad files. One of them is a test file. All you have to do the open scad file is copy the text and paste it into open scad. That's not the correct way. pronounce it as open S can I believe? but Open Sky does the way I pronounce it because that's how it's spelled. It's an amazing piece of software and What it lets you do is add variables. So say for instance, if you've got a bottle and you measure it with your calipers or whatever and you get a measurement that you think is going to fit. the first thing to print off is one of these little test strings. It's a very fast print and just size it to fit over the bottle to see if it's going to fit snugly. That saves you to doing big long, three or four hour prints and then ending up with something that doesn't quite fit. The next file that you'll find down below is for this which scales up to this: I've added. Uh, recently added an extra feature because I realized that if you're going to be making them from scratch instead of this type of vial which has this glass recess here that sits down into the base and then stops other standard bottles like say, for instance, a wine bottle will slide all the way down and it will effectively rest on top of the LED lamp, which is good for thermal connection, but to provide extra support for that, I've added an extra support pillar in the middle and to take the weight off that so that as the lamp is pressed down on it provides support centrally. The script lets you choose the bottle diameter which will be the inside diameter here and it also lets you choose the overall height which in the case of this one to allow for the fact that it was the lamp and then this section here. I added them together with a bit of extra space to keep them a little bit separate and this one was about 120 millimeters tall. Um, let me show you part of the script here on how you can change variables in it. Here's my Zoombox: Zimbox is active. Let's Zoom down on this and I shall show you the variables you can adjust at the top of the script. screwdriver Pointy thing. The two main variables you want to adjust are the height. in this case, I've set it at 20 millimeters so I could print this shorter version so you could see what's inside. In reality, it's going to be just about 120 millimeter. In my case, that's the total height from the table up to the top of the uh, the tube. The other thing you're going to type in is the bottle size 70 millimeters. damper. In this instance, you can go down to 60.. Now here's where I think you know I added this little cable grip here. Well, this little cable grip down here. Um, and if I remove that completely, let you actually go to a smaller size. If anything, I could also nudge these screws in so I could make this smaller. This is a prototype most of these things are, but if you want to make any other adjustments to things you could uh, well that let lets you 60. is such that you may have to trim the corners off this because it will be very the cable grip will be very close to the edge. Um, as you go bigger, it's less critical. It'll just scale everything up including this six millimeter hole for the cable to go and we'll just gradually move out with the skilled up size. The other things you can adjust are the wall thickness which is this. it's I did it in multiples of 0.4 which is the nozzle size in the printer at the base thickness which you can't really see here. it's the base down here, this bit here, how thick it is initially I started off just for a rough size with one millimeter for a faster print, but two millimeters is fine. The pillar diameter you can adjust I left I've made it seven I think that's fine. Uh, the post height uh is the height of this pillar and it will automatically add a little skirt around here just for extra uh, unsnap ability just for Extra Strength It lets you choose the scroll 2.5 millimeter which is the screw hole I chose for this and uh, the Fn100 just is the number of segments around the circle. The higher it is, the uh, smoother it looks, but 100 is fine so you can pretty much leave everything as it is, but just change these two variables to suit. If you want to do a test to see if how your print's going to work out, keep the height small and it will basically just adjust this. The pillars are all be the same size, but it'll adjust the outer wall. It just results in a faster test print. Zooming back out the other files will be a very fast print. This one is a little plate designed to match the Uh the cable restraint bar which has the two outer pillars and then it's got that little bar that the cable gets squished against but not. Don't squish against it too tightly just for the sake of the cable. Another thing will print off the other file is for this Uh plate. This plate is designed to take a classic ceramic Gu10 lamp holder. This is a type you might find in a down light. If you loosen this screw off and then you take these two screws out, you'll get the beer ceramic holder and then you can do what you like with it. Once you've got your ceramic holder out, thread your cable in. um, if it's got the plug already or you can thread it back through the other way. otherwise I cut these leads short and I soldered onto them and it may take a bit of extra flux because this heat resistant cable tends to be sort of Steel based and it just it makes it a bit more tricky to solder, but you can sort it and then I put heat shrink sleep over it. Another thing you can do. there's loads of room in here. You can put a little connector in here. it's all going to be out of touch anyway. I Mean, let's face it, you'd have to be kidding to get your hand out there. That's the people we're trying to protect anyway. But not to worry. Uh, this is kind of an adult projector. um, things. So you put your Gu10 holder onto that. Uh, you've terminate the wires. You then have to fish down inside here, which, uh, if it's quite narrow, that's going to be a bit tricky in hindsight. I could have made a a base that slotted into outer sleeve could have done that, but as it is, you can see down there. I've got the all-black luxury version which has the base plate for the Gu10 holder and the little cable restraint showing a slight curve where it is gripping the cable seems fairly solid, pulls the cable relatively firmly but not dragging it out. once you've done that, you then have to Fumble down inside with your lamp and note that uh with these ones, you can get a couple of different effects with this classic style of lamp. you can remove the front cover and the lenses, but note that the little circuit board behind is usually not glued on, it's usually held in place by these lenses. These total internal reflection type light guides uh, not that the majority of these lamps I get they're loose and rattly, which means they're not pressing down at too far, but if you have the bare chips, it will give a quite a sparkle effect or give a different effect to if you've got the focusing lenses on the front of it. The other option is to use one of the little Gu10 LED lamps again. you have to pop the cover out for a sparklier effect and again I chopped on the resistors off to lower the power dissipation down because this is in an enclosure and uh, it just means that there's a risk of it getting hotter in that and it just means it's going to last longer. Note that this is not suitable for a Tungsten Gu10 because it will probably melt the plastic. This whole thing is designed for low energy use. The screws I used for putting the lamp holder onto these four big pillars I used four by three eighths inch screws uh pan head self tapping screws uh that in Metric is 2.9 by 9.5 and for the Uh the cable grip I used shorter ones quarter inch long one so that's about six millimeter by four or in this case for Metric 6.4 millimeter ish by 2.9 millimeter. So let's go and take a look at the glitter vials now. I'll just throw that down on the ground. Being Led based, it's pretty indestructible. The glitter I Have spent a very long time working on getting the perfect glitter recipe and uh, the best I've found so far is Calcium Nitrate now Calcium nitrate I've tried Calcium Chloride, it was close but not quite there. Calcium nitrate is sold online on eBay If you type in calcium nitrate, you'll see fertilizers that don't actually see calcium nitrate. Let me just go. and uh, just take a note of something one moment please. Okay, you will find it. described as Calcium Fertilizer 15.5 Nitrogen 26.5 calcium I think the Karens have had calcium nitrate banned as a search freeze on eBay because it used to have connection with pyrotechnic compounds, but in reality it's not used in pyrotechnic compounds because it's very hygroscopic, absorbs moisture which makes it perfect for this. but rubbish for fireworks and things like that so it's strange. but anyway, you can find it under those disguises the purer the better because if you get uh, impure stuff it'll be very cloudy and you have to let it settle down when you dissolve it in water. And I can give you the the statistics of that as well. One moment please. Okay, I found that one kilogram of calcium nitrate required 650 milliliters of water to dissolve it completely. You may notice there's a slight fluff in the water. This are not going to disturb up too much. that is impurities that have settled down. It's not super pure, but the pure chemical is the more expensive it gets. It's just a compromise. As mentioned by Nile Red, he says that ultimately you get the base cheap chemical and then you purify it. It's just the best thing to do. Um, this is really heavy. This feels bizarrely heavy for UPS If you're used to picking up, say, a one liter plastic bottle of liquid and it was filled with a saturated calcium nitrate solution, you'd be surprised how heavy it is and that's what's needed here. A very high specific gravity that will be down to experimentation. Use a bigger bottle. When you make your glitter solution, add your glitter to it, leave it, give it a good Shake Give it time to settle and then gradually add water until it starts not floating straight to the top, but actually getting into the liquid. Now the Glitters Oh, incidentally for Led use, you just want to fine tune it because you want to be almost neutral buoyancy where it gets into a dispersion here, but it doesn't immediately migrate out of the bottom which is not good because it blocks the light or the top which if it's too, if the liquid is too dense, it just means it's harder to get in motion or from the glitter lamp has been running for a while. it tends to precipitate out at the top. The glitter you get coated Glitters This is not coated glitter and that manifests itself as putting it into the glitter liquid and after a while you notice that it's less glittery and there's more little clear plastic. Flakes and there's aluminum now dissolved in the calcium nitrate and other Glitters are less pruned I Think this one is less prone to it, but it's one of these things that you'll maybe have to experiment with. different. Glitters and if you have a problem with the aluminum matching off, then just pour it through a filter into another bottle and then pour it back into the bottle and add some fresh glitter. Maybe a different version. This one came from an eBay star called Twisted Envy but they don't seem to be about anymore. They sold bulk Glitters It was quite handy. It was sold as of nail art. um, glitter for making your nails look pretty I Don't do that. That's specially for ladies who wish the nails to look pretty. This is a good thing because many of the chemicals they use to make their nails look pretty are very useful for other things. But yes, um, other things worthy of mention? Well, something worthy mention: a glitter that did etch off I Put it in commercial glitter. A commercial glitter lamp which I think is also calcium nitrate. but I don't know if they've added something, but it didn't etch the metal off the glitch in that. So maybe there's a secret ingredient or maybe they have some other chemical that is very high density but doesn't have that slight corrosion effect. Looking for a corrosion inhibitor for calcium nitrate just shows it's used in concrete to inhibit. Corrosion Of Steel But that's not helpful for allification. But by the time you're finished, if you've made up your light with its low energy LED lamp underneath, you'll get a nice slow movement and the fact that you've got focused Points of Light sharp sources of light means it's much sparklier than with the higher power tungsten lamp because it's got a fairly large area of filament. Other things worthy of mention: Oh yes, if you have a glitter lamp, see, for instance, it's got blue liquid in it. Uh, you, if you use a blue LED light, it's going to shine through that blue liquid make it very sparkly whereas with a white Source Like the tungsten lamp and you'd lose a lot of the light through the colored liquid. It would also get darker and darker as it got to the top using a matched color of led to the liquid or just using silver glitter and changing the color with colored LED lamps is a great solution to that and that is more or less it. That's how you can make your lamp. So if you go down below into the description, you will find those scripts um, just copy and paste them into open scad, change the variables to suit your own personal preferences and it will create your STL file that you can then 3D print or alternatively improvise and hack and modify an existing glitter lamp to the lower power, slower, more colorful variation. And remember, once you've made a 3D printed one with plastic, definitely don't stick in a standard tungsten lamp. Might be worth labeling it to make sure people don't put in a standard 50 watt Gu10 lamp. Another thing that's worth mentioning is these aluminum caps are designed as pressure reliefs as well because if you put a glitter or lava lamp on an overpowered lamp, it will potentially make the bottle burst. I Think the reason they put the rubber cap and then fold around this fairly soft aluminum cover at the top is to act as a vent release. Not a problem with LED lamps though, and so you could to theoretically use a crown Corker to put one of this beer caps on this instead, but I'm not sure if that would fit I don't know if it would fit all bottles I Don't know how. Oh, this one's got a much thicker cap and I think it does fit this one as well, but that would mean that the bottle could not be used as a conventional glitter base that someone could put an overpowered lamp in. Not that it's easy getting the lamps these days since they've also been banned for being ecologically unsound. and they're getting hard to get and they're really expensive now. Another reason to switch to LED but that is it. The glitter lamp project with all 3D components. Quite nice to build. Quite a good visual effect. Super low power and IT projects all those little beams around the rim.