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The Scepter
The Scepter lit up. Green glass end tendrils and middle sphere glowing, with cast bronze and mahogany sculptural sections.
 
The Scepter. Green glass end tendrils and middle sphere, cast bronze and mahogany sculptural sections.
 

The Scepter is an exploration in glass, metal, wood, and electronics. The overall design and all of the parts were first sketched out on paper and then developed in CAD. Many of the parts were further detailed in Blender to add surface textures and non-geometric details. The overall dimensions are about 24" long by about 3" wide.

The glass parts, many of the metal parts, and various internal parts were 3D printed. I printed the glass and metal parts in castable wax, for use in lost-wax casting. The metal castings were done by a local jewelry caster who I've been working with for many years. (My castings tend to be difficult.) I do all of my own glass casting using colored glass frit and a ceramic shell process. The wax is burned out of the ceramic shell with a torch and then the casting is done in an electric kiln.

Internal structural parts including circuit board holders, LED holders, and wire strain reliefs were printed in fused nylon and in a toughened SLA resin. I print the SLA parts myself and have a 3D printing company print the nylon parts.

The metal parts are bronze and brass. The parts that weren't cast were milled and/or turned. Most of the metal parts were given a thin copper plating, then patinated, and finished with a verdigris wax. I do the plating, patination, and other finishing operations myself.

I made the wood parts from mahogany on a lathe. The pushbutton and connector holes were milled, and the parts were finished with stain, Watco oil, and butcher's wax.

The electronics include an Arduino Nano, an accelerometer, four Neopixel RGBW LED rings, a rechargeable battery, and the necessary voltage conversion, charging, and switching circuitry. I laid out the pc boards for the Arduino & Accelerometer and the USB & Switch, and had them fabricated by a pc board fabrication company. The electronic components on the USB & Switch board are so small that I had to solder most of them in place under a microscope.

The user interface consists of a pushbutton switch to toggle power on and off, and a USB Mini socket for battery charging and programming updates. Internally, the USB is split into +5V for battery charging, and data lines for the Arduino.

The Arduino controls all of the light patterns and takes input from the accelerometer. The coding is pretty straightforward. The use of the accelerometer provides additional flashes and patterns of colored light in response to moving the Scepter around.

 
An animated GIF of the random light pulsing in the Scepter.
When the accelerometers aren't active, the Scepter has default LED pulsing that includes random color flash sequences.
 
A detailed view of the Scepter center glass sphere, glowing green.
Details of the center sphere and surrounding features.
 
A raw glass casting of the end tendrils.

 

This is a raw casting of the tendrils.

It's printed in castable wax, and then a wax sprue and funnel element is added. Here, the cast glass portions of the sprue and funnel can be seen on the bottom.

The wax is then coated with multiple layers of a refractory material which will air harden. This forms a ceramic shell over the wax. The wax is then burnt out with a torch, where the heat of the torch also hardens the shell.

The shell is then placed funnel side up and filled with glass frit. The filled shell is placed in an electric kiln and fired to melt the glass frit. A slow and controlled cooling in the kiln allows the glass casting to anneal,

Finally, the sprue and funnel are removed and the bottom surface is finished with successively finer grades of abrasives.

The cast glass center hemispheres were made with the same process.

Behind the tendrils, various finished bronze metal castings can be seen.

 
 
End tendrils assembled onto cast bronze sections, with LED wires visible.
The tendrils are shown assembled into their cast bronze holders. A connector for the end LED ring can be protruding from each. In the lower right there is a cast bronze end joint which the tendrils holder will be fastened into. In the upper right there is a sphere end joint with the internal LED ring visible.
 
Exploded diagram showing the parts of the Scepter.
This is an exploded diagram of the entire Scepter, minus the wiring.
 
 
Copyright 2025 by Scott Lefton