Mosaic Lamp

This lamp may be one of the most challenging things that I have yet designed and printed, but it is also one of my favorite designs. This design does take a lot of patience and time to print and assemble, but I know at least for me, the results were worth it. (The lattice frame of the lampshade alone takes about 20 hours to print.) Not counting the original development prototype, I have created five of these lamps so far, and I have printed lattice frames for three more. All were printed in PLA. The design can be customized an almost infinite number of ways; you are only limited by whatever colors of filaments you have available.

The lampshade is a lattice frame that has 7 rows of 24 tiles each. (That's right - there are 168 of them.) The tiles are not glued in place; they snap into grooves that are inside the lattice. In addition to the printed parts, you will need a bottle-lamp kit and three pieces of 16 ga. (1.5 mm) x 125 mm long steel wire. (I have included a picture of the bottle-lamp kit that I purchased from my local Wal-Mart; you can probably find the same thing at Amazon, or in many hardware stores.) You will also need a small amount of super-glue to glue the lampshade support together. (I have been using the Loctite 'Ultragel Control' brand with good results.) Or, you could just make one of the lampshades and fit it to any existing lamp you have sitting around the house.

I have included files for two lampshade sizes. One has a maximum diameter of 196 mm, and is 190 mm high. This will (barely) fit on a 200 mm wide print bed. The other has a maximum diameter of 218 mm, and is also 190 mm high. This will fit on a 220 mm wide print bed. (The print bed of my Flyingbear P902 is 220 mm square; I found that when I was using Cura to slice the lattice model, I had to turn off the generation of a skirt or brim. With a larger printer, such as a CR10, this will not be an issue.) The files for the two lampshade sizes are preceded with the numbers '196' and '218'; note that the tiles for one lampshade size will not fit into the lattice for the other lampshade size. I have also included files for two different lamp bodies. The tallest of them is 180 mm high with a maximum diameter of 85 mm, and the other is 175 mm high with a maximum diameter of 80 mm.

If your printer is reasonably reliable and has a suitable print volume, it is most likely able to print the parts for these lamps. I used my FlyingBear P902 for printing the lampshade lattice frame and tiles, and my AnyCubic Kossel (pulley version) for printing the lamp bodies. Both of these printers are pretty basic, and neither was expensive, but they did a good job printing these lamps.

I hope you enjoy this design. If you have any questions about it, please put them in the comments and I will do my best to answer them.