This will be a fairly short update, filling in some progress since last week. I have received the LED and ordered the power supply (thanks to Zeke and others for ECE help!), and sculpted the body of the hopefully final piece.

In class today, with the help of Zeke’s power supply, I was able to light the LED even though the power supply has not yet come in. It was very bright, and will be more than bright enough for this piece with just the single diode (rated at 1000 lumens).

When sculpting the larger final piece, I planned to bake it only partially, so the clay is still soft and I could route the designs more easily. However, I think I may have overestimated the thickness of the clay, as after only 15 minutes (half of the recommended cure time for a 1/2″ thick piece) it was already quite hard and over the course of the next day had completely cured.

I will be experimenting with carving the rune patterns with a dremel tool instead of a manual sculpting tool (basically a small spoon), which will hopefully make it go much faster. I will also plan to do another pass with fresh wet Sculpey, filling in any chips or cracks I don’t want in the final piece and then putting it back in the oven to cure them on. Besides that, my next steps are to figure out the motor assembly and start figuring out how to make the blind on the inside (not yet built) spin!