I’ve always been intrigued by repeating geometric structures. As you look at them in different angles, certain patterns are revealed or obscured. Interestingly, this complexity is in contrast to the simple construction of these lamps. This lamp, as well as the other spaceframes I’ve made are based on a grid of half-octadedrons, also known as pyramid shapes. In this lamp it was possible to add a curve to make the frame look a little more organic. Due to this wave element, I find the structure of this lamp even more intriguing.

New developments

Even though the basic structure of the spaceframe is the same, A fair amount of work was spent on the wave nature of the lamp as well as the specific lighting solutions.

Wave patterns

The lamp has a compound curve integrated into it, giving it an almost wave-like appearance. The freely rotating nature of the lamp sometimes makes it look as if it is a freely moving cloud raining down some light.
This wave like structure was introduced by bending the bottom surface of the frame and afterwards fixating the bottom surface to the top surface.

Integrating surface mount LEDs

Most of the development time of this lamp went into the adaptation of a different kind of LED components. In the previous spaceframes, these LED components were of the so-called through hole type. Through hole components are easy to obtain and relatively easy to integrate into a 3d printed structure. However, these through hole components are not widely used in commercial applications, and I’ve been unable to obtain through hole components that produce enough light with a acceptable angle of emission and with a high color reproducion index.
Here, I’ve integrated surface mount component leds. These are more widely used in industry, if you buy a LED lamp today, it likely contains these surface mount components. The suface mount LEDs I utilized have excellent characteristics, a large angle of emission, comfortable light color but most importantly a high color reproduction index. A high color reproduction index is important to me because it will make sure the reflections of the light will be very similar to those of sunlight, making the light in my living room appear natural. Unfortunately surface mount components represent extra challenges in my lamps. They are usually soldered, but this is impossible in the 3d printed connecting points that I utilize, so I had to find a solution to make these connections stable and reliable.

New geometric patterns

Fortunately, after a lot of trial and error, I’ve found acceptable solutions to all the issues that the integration of these new leds introduced. In the future, I hope to integrate more elaborate geometric shapes and sizes into my lamp designs. I’ll be sharing these when they get finished, so please watch this space from time to time.

Last modified on 2023-03-13