halloween · lantern · 3D · press-fit · seasonal

Pumpkin Lantern

A pumpkin built the way the globe is: flat plywood plates on a skeleton of ribs and rings, squashed into a pumpkin, with the eyes and grin cut clean through the front plates. It stands on short legs over an LED tealight, so the light comes up through the base and out through the face, and throws it onto the wall. Pick the size, the number of segments and the face; everything re-cuts to fit. No glue, no engraving, one evening to cut.

200 × 200 × 185.4 mm · 7.87 × 7.87 × 7.30 in

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Version

Cut and assembled on an xTool M2: the tighter slots hold the ribs without glue and the cap goes on with the first rib, one tab at a time.

·The plates and base now take the rib tabs and legs at exact size, with no clearance, so they sit tighter and more snug. Version 1's plates could rattle.
·The top cap keeps its 0.05 mm of clearance, because all the rib tabs and the stem have to enter it at once.
·The hollow inside each rib now runs right up to the top and bottom ring notches. Version 1 left a long 3 mm sliver of wood between each of those notches and the hollow; it did nothing structural and snapped when a rib was pushed up into the cap from inside. The rings still seat against the solid wall beyond the hollow.

Dimensions

Widthmmin

Across the widest point. Height is 80% of this, pumpkin-style.

Segments round

Face

Light

Stem

Your material

Thicknessmmin

Measure it with calipers. Sheets sold as 3 mm are often 2.7 to 3.2.

Kerfmm

How much the beam burns away. Higher makes joints tighter. 0.10 to 0.20 suits most diode lasers.

Your machine

Keep clear of each edgemm · usable 290 × 290 mm (11.4 × 11.4 in)5 mm suits most machines. If the camera frames less than the whole sheet, or clamps hold its edges, keep more clear so nothing lands outside what the laser can reach.Use smaller sheets where they doOnly the pieces too big for a small sheet go on a full-size one; the rest fill the small sheets. For when the big sheets are the scarce ones.Dark pieces on their own sheetsThe pieces shown in darker wood (a backdrop, a map's backing) get sheets and files of their own, so they can be cut from a darker sheet.

80 parts: 60 plates, 12 ribs, 4 rings, cap, base and a two-piece stem. No engraving, so it cuts in one session.

Parts: 80
Sheets: 5
Assembly: Press-fit

Holding tabs· parts stay in the sheet, snap them outmm

How many to cut

Free with an account. Opens straight in xTool Studio with cut, score and engrave layers, positioned on your bed at real size.

Assembly

1Plates are scored band-column: bands 1 (bottom) to 5 (top), columns from the front going right. Ribs are R1 to RN, rings 1 to 4 from the bottom.
2Set the base down and hold the four rings at their heights. Slide the ribs in radially one at a time, leg through the base's open slot, notches onto the rings, two opposite ribs first, then fill in.
3Fit the top cap as you go, not at the end: after each rib is in, lift the cap a little and drop that rib's top tab into its cap hole. Pressing the cap onto all the tabs at once does not work, they never line up together.
4Push the two stem plates together into the cap's cross slot.
5Push each plate onto its rib's two tabs, band by band from the middle out. Plates touch edge to edge; a thin seam of light between them is part of the look.
6Stand it on its legs over an LED tealight. To switch the light, lift the pumpkin. No real candles: it's plywood.