Valley Lamp

White PLA a little over a millimetre thick lets light through. The question behind this lamp was whether that one fact is enough to build a landscape: not a shade around a light source, but a row of cross-sections that glow themselves.

The design. The lamp has 24 sheets, each 1.2 mm thick, standing 4 mm apart. Every sheet is a slice of the same landscape and is lower than the one behind it. Together their top edges draw two hills with a valley that shifts sideways from front to back. At both ends each sheet dips 3 mm below the rim of the base, so no straight edge sticks out. The base has level grooves every 3.83 mm and a rim that climbs 23 mm towards the back. A white insert holds the sheets in slots and acts as the light chamber.

What makes it hard. In the second version the base had a tucked-under bottom edge that needed supports. So in version three it is two parts: a foot printed upside down and a ring. Six short pieces of 1.75 mm filament serve as alignment pins, and glue does the rest. The joint hides in the lowest groove. The groove ceilings slope at 45 degrees, so the ring prints without supports as well. Each sheet has a notch in its foot that moves 0.45 mm along per sheet: in the right order the notches form one slanting line. Anyone who has dropped 24 nearly identical sheets will see why.

Where it stands. The print files are ready: 27 parts on 13 build plates, 13 hours of printing and about 553 g of filament according to the slicer. The lamp has not been printed and measured yet. The 0.15 mm of play per side in the slots, and how much light 1.2 mm of Ivory White passes, are assumptions until the first print exists. The images are renders.

It shows what a custom design can involve: many parts, two materials and no supports. If you would like something similar, ask for a quote.