ST3LR: The Space-inspired Terrestrial 3d-printed Light Radiator

As far as I can recall, I’ve always been into handmade. Toy rifles, wooden hotpads, cutting boards - these are the things which were not only useful afterwards, but kept my interest in process of making.
I’m still participating in DIY club. But my projects have become more sophisticated, with pleasanter outcomes (I hope) and tools that a way pricier. 3D printer have become one of my recent acquisitions into a toolbox.
Is a 3D printer an expensive toy? I’d say not only a toy. Because beyond printing a lot of enjoyable but sometimes fruitless things, you can develop and create something on your own. I’d like to tell you about how I’ve constructed and made desk lamp with attractive design.

Picture in the beginning shows appearance of my creation. The concept is riddled with cosmic theme. Not only overall techno-minimalistic look but also special features affiliate the lamp with airless space. The backbone of construction is “winged metal”: lightweight and durable aluminium, material for fuselages and fairings.
The structure is held up by U-shaped base with the roar of rocket launching resonating between the ends.

Curves which form contours are conic sections. As well as making silhouette streamlined these curves have vivid connection with Earth orbit - all objects are moving by conic section trajectories in gravity field. Moreover, inner structure - honeycomb - recalls composite materials in space industry, there it uses for decreasing the weight and saving the rigidity.

As a light source I’ve selected LED. It is low powered but bright and has eyes-friendly specs: absolute absence of pulsations, high color rendering index (CRI) - it’s essential when speaking about usual usage.

There is small visor attached to LED bulb.

This visor can be rotated to adjust position to protect eyes from bright light.

Looks like glass of space suit, doesn’t it? And it has similar functions plus glows with smooth green light.

Not only the position of the visor can be tuned, but also placement of U-base along aluminum backbone. Sliding of it up and down leads to changing angle and as a result light distribution - it’s possible, for example, to highlight all desk or concentrate beam more locally.

Green plastic which was used for printing also has some unusual features. It’s called PLA and manufactured from corn. Yes, usual corn from crop fields. As a result, biodegradable, eco-friendly, safe even for food contact application - these adjectives are about it. And thinking about cosmos, in principle it can be produced on spaceship.
On the technical side, my lamp s pretty simple. 12V 2A DC power supply and corresponding DC power socket, 12V LED (I used Gauss 201505105 GU5.3), bulb holder (MR16 type in my case), button and aluminium profile (40mm X 20mm) - that’s it you hardly can print and should buy. Electric circuit also doesn’t puzzle anyone’s head - 2 wires from power socket go to LED: one’s connected directly, another - trough button. In my case polarity doesn’t matter because LED’s driver can deal with both directions of current.
Plastic details were designed in Autodesk Fusion 360 and also don’t raise questions - I’ve done them without any knowledge about Fusion on my start. This software is user-friendly and can be free (on some loyal terms).
So, this is my lamp filled with space ideas. One can say that this is simple handmade lamp. But turning on fantasy, I’d imagine how somewhere on the way to Mars future terraformer is sitting at the table nearby illuminator and in the lights of such lamp is reading about 500 hard sols of Mark Watney on red planet.
Coming down to earth, it’s worth to mention about this project, where I’d checked out my initial idea. But only idea, all details are original and differs from this source.
To sum up, I want to say that 3D printer can be useful and firstly as a way of materializing your ideas. Only after purchasing my printer I had fully realized all awesomeness of converting fantasy into real world things. It’s tremendously widen my horizons: hard to produce details are no longer point to keep projects in cabinet drawer - just print all necessary.
I would be glad to get feedback, hear your notes and opinions and answer any your questions. I’m going to add touch control, wi-fi interface (keep in mind, I’m engineer from Internet of Things Group) and dimming. Also I’m planning to finish night light lamp with similar design (lamp’s babe is on photo below).

Thank you for attention, and stay tuned...

Very nice! Also good to see someone doing something besides Yoda heads and tugboats.

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Ultra MegaMax Dominator 3D printer: [drmrehorst.blogspot.com]

Thank you!

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the_digital_dentist
Very nice! Also good to see someone doing something besides Yoda heads and tugboats.

Good ideea, a yoda headon a tugboat xD joking

To the topic, i'm very impressed with the design, very futuristic.
Nice to see people using commonly available software to create things that can be described s works of art (functional too).
Hope it inspires more people, great job!