OPTION 1
Push latch mechanism to open and switch on light
BUTTON- a portable table lamp
Year: 2021
Project type: Personal
Techniques: CNC programming and milling, 3D printing
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The design process for this piece started as travel resumed post pandemic. I noticed that not every hotel had table lamps conveniently located next to you to turn off right before you sleep. The quality of light is also different in each hotel, and for someone like me who finds it hard to sleep in a new place, I was thinking it would be comforting to have a lamp whose light I was used to.
The brief in my head was for the lamp to be as small as possible, and to have a dynamic element to control the amount of light diffused. It also needed to be something that worked as an accessory while it was off.
THE FINAL PRODUCT
LEARNINGS:
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Positives
- The size worked out well as a portable yet well sized table lamp.
-The threading on the CNC was successful
-3D printed shade worked well both aesthetically and functionally
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To improve:
-The top half is a bit taller and looks a little disproportionate- to reduce in the future
-The light is quite him; one LED strip is not enough to light up the room enough
-Shade needs to go into the wood more/ model needs to be changed; the beginning on the threading is visible and looks slightly awkward
Lamp scale- almost bite sized
background image from istockphoto
background image from istockphoto
OPTION 2
A screwing system integrated with the lampshade to control the height of the shade and subsequently the amount of light being diffused
The most challenging part of bringing this design to life was programming the CNC machine to create the negative threading. This required creating a spiral pathway projected from the plan of the design. The entire model and the CNC toolpaths were created on Fusion 360; a software that I did not have much experience with before creating this design.
It was a great experience to push the capability of the CNC. The spiral pathway to creating threading was something that hadn’t been explored yet at LightFish- the workshop I was making this lamp at. (Process seen in video to the left)
The foam model helped me understand the scale and I reduced the size of the lamp from a 200mm diameter to a 150mm diameter.
The 3D printed prototype was a good exercise to test the functionality of the screwing system, considering that the threading was custom designed to dramatize the threads and reduce the number of rotations required to increase the height.
The wood used were off cuts from the other pieces produced in the LightFish workshop.
