Clip-In Candelabra Lamp Base

I saw FritzPeppone's planet lithophanes and immediately thought they were awesome and also that one of them would make a great present for someone I know. However, Fritz appears to be in the EU, or that's my guess based on the E14/E27 lamp bases and links to EU stores. I'm in the USA, and I didn't want the Bambu base, not because it's Bambu, but because I wanted a 120 V line cord, not a USB powered light. So I set off to find something I could get locally.

Being in the midwest, I went to Menard's and browsed what they had for light sockets. SKU 370-4566 caught my eye, and seemed perfect. This is a candelabra base light socket with a spring-loaded base clamp, designed as a light socket for those blow-molded plastic holiday decorations that were common before the inflatable ones took over. It's designed to fit in a 1" hole in thin plastic. Perfect!

I modified the E14 base to give it a 1" hole with a small 2.5 thick lip for the spring loaded base to clip into. I had to widen out the base and remove the permanent supports so that you could reach in and clip or unclip the light. I then printed it with supports only for the flat overhanging circle in the middle and supports for the cord clamp. It's not perfect, I cut away part of the material around one side of the holes for the cord clamp, but it's good enough and I had to get this done as the lamp is a Christmas present.

In case you're curious the bulb is a Sylvania 40 W equivalent soft white TruWave bulb. It was one of the few warmer-white LED bulbs with candelabra bases that Menard's had when I picked up the lamp base.

CAUTION:

I recommend only using an LED bulb in this base. I would not recommend an incandescent bulb be used, as they put off a lot of heat and hot things and PLA printed parts do not mix.

How to Print:

Print upright. Add painted supports around the cord clamp and on the flat circular overhang. Select “For support enforcers only” for supports.

Other:

• 3 perimeters (I use 3 minimum for any part with heat-set inserts)
• Rotate so cord opening is facing the back of the print bed
• Seam position on rear
• Scarf joint placement: Everywhere (not required, but makes the threads print much cleaner)

You Will Also Need:

The “01_puck_base_lid” and “01_puck_base_strain_relief” from the original model.

Other Notes:

I made this flat on the top as I was trying to print it upside down and I had to remove Fritz's built-in permanent supports his original E14 lamp base had. However, this didn't work well as it resulted in the upper portion of the base being ugly due to the overhang of the wider base. I left it as-is though as it seemed to work well this way with the short lamp socket.

If I was to spend more time on this, I'd modify the cut I did for clearance for accessing the spring tabs of the lamp base and make it so it doesn't cut material away from the cord clamp heat-set inserts. That said, the heat set inserts still held fine for me, even with part of the material cut away.

I've included the .step and .FCStd files I made so you can modify this further if you'd like.