Every year around Christmas, my family and I draw names for a Secret-Santa gift exchange. This year I drew my father’s name. When I was growing up my father taught me various electrical and wiring skills, so as a way to honor how much he taught me during that time I decided to make him a lamp.
I began looking up modern lamp shades designs and playing in Blender3D as possible shade styles. I knew that I wanted to 3D print the design so it would need to be semi-porous to all for the light to shine through. In doing renders I explored how that could become part of the aesthetic.
The lamp was printed on a Robo3D C2 3D printer with a wood infused PLA filament. The base took about 20 hours. The stopper that helps keep the shade off the bulb took about 10 hours. The shade instead took about roughly 5 days to print. After printing each part, I went through a sanding and clean-up phase. The base where the bulb and socket is, was coated in a wood stain over 3 times to bring out the wood like qualities of the filament. It was then coated in a resin to clean up the layer-lines and seal the stain. The shade in stopper was painted with white gesso and then painted with white acrylic paint.
The lamp stands roughly 10 inches off the table.
