Extraordinary design from Solid Surface: the manufacturing secrets of “Avalon”, the French winner of the 2009 HI-MACS® Design Contest.

Avalon is an unusual lamp resulting from the assembly of four HI-MACS® translucent “figure 8s”. Fabrication steps of the prototype:

1. Creation of the Mould

The initial step in the manufacturing work for ADJ, the HI-MACS® distributor for eastern and northern France, is to create a wooden mould. To do this, it creates a 3D “figure 8” shape (Fig. 1) using offset angles between the two loops of the “figure 8”. This offset allows the HI-MACS® rods to be twisted.

Nails are attached on the mould along the “figure 8”. These nails will be used to support the HI-MACS® rods on the mould in one of the following manufacturing steps.

Two holes are pierced in the centre of the “figure 8” to allow the HI-MACS® band to cross without crudely overlapping, thus giving lightness to the element.

Fig. 1: Wooden mould

2. Preparation of HI-MACS®

The manufacturer then cuts using a 1.20m HI-MACS® four-band digital saw in a HI-MACS® plate 12mm thick. A digital control machine allows a back band 4 mm wide and 4mm deep in the thickness of the rod (Fig. 2) to be milled. The goal is to insert the light source here.

Fig. 2: Back band in the HI-MACS® rod

3. Thermoforming

The four rods are slid into an oven heated to 160°C uniformly for a few minutes to make them flexible.  They are then attached one by one on the mould in a “figure 8” between the nails provided for this purpose. The problem is that the final shape should be rounded, while the mould is built in right angles. A person is then appointed to hold the two ends of element and to ensure that it has a nice shape, while waiting for the HI-MACS® rods to cool. At this point, the four HI-MACS® “figure 8” shapes are thermoformed but are not yet closed.

4. Assembly of the elements

The design student Denis Bacal made a special trip from Paris to the ADJ workshop in Strasbourg to entangle the four “figure 8” shapes to his liking in order to give the prototype its final shape.

When the lamp’s silhouette is agreed upon, ADJ closes the “figure 8” shapes by linking them using a special glue for HI-MACS® then smoothes out the seams by sanding them. After this step, the manufacturer hangs Avalon to check the layout of the four “figure 8” shapes.

5. Installation of the light sources

ADJ's creative, clever innovation is the use of a silicone profile with integrated LEDs – the same as the headlights on Audi cars. The light profile is inserted into the thermoformed HI-MACS® “figure 8” shape with the back band milled for this purpose. As HI-MACS® is translucent, an original light effect appears. The manufacturing is finished.