DESIGN 100 --- PRINTED LIGHT
Brief: I want to make a 3D printed lamp with fruit.
Contents: because I think food is very important for people. It is a product of nature. Food represents hope and it is nature's gift of life.
ORGANIC MOODBOARD
I found some organic design pictures on the Internet that fit the theme of my works. Also found some image references for fruit.
Sketches:
In class, our group members give me some suggestion and gave some image about fruit. So I decided to make a pear shaped lamp.
Ideation phase
I search some images of pears from the Internet that can inspire me, so as to bring more design ideas to my work.
MY SKETCHES ITERATION
My initial idea was to make a pear shape with a hollowed out turn up and design a flame inside and put the lamp inside. However, I got a feedback from tutor, which may not be possible in 3d printing and is very troublesome. So I changed my original idea and made a lamp with curved vertical stripes combined with the shape of flame and pear, and placed a hollow circle inside to place the bulb. But it can also be very difficult to do. So I came up with an alternative: make a broken pear that looks like it's been eaten by bugs, and put a long hollow shaped like a stone inside the pear to house the light bulb.
START MAKING MY 3D MODEL
I changed the look of my final 3d model. I think a circular shape with a hollow in the middle would be more suitable. So I drew the design and started making my 3d model.
I sought the help of studio staff to make the basic prototype of pear, and used hollow tools and round tools to make irregular hollow out effect of pear. I envisioned that when I put the light in the model, the light would be reflected through the hollowed out holes around it.
It may be more troublesome to combine circular model and hollowed-out pear modwl, so I choose to build two models separately and finally combine and connect them. To fix the circle of the lamp, a solid circle is used, and a hole is cut in the center of the circle for placing the lamp. Round tools are used on the surface of the circle to create hollow patterns of different sizes, so that the combination of the pear shape and the circle is more like a work without the sense of mismatch.
Other people's suggestions for my model:
Tutor suggest me to make the inside ball be the wire shape.If I put a solid circle inside the pear, the light will not shine out, so it is better to make the ball inside the shape of wire, that the light will come on well.
3D PRINTING A PRACTICE MODEL
The first print failed because the bottom of the pear was too smooth to stand. I recreated the 3d model of the bottom of the pear so that the bottom of the pear can support the pear to stand up.
remake the model bottom
I changed the bottom of both the pear and the round models to be flat to give the models enough support.
3D MODEL PRINT PRACTICE 2
I removed the support material from the inside of the model. Put in the two wire shapes I printed earlier and found that it was much better. So I decided to put two different sizes of circular model connected up and down inside the final pear model.
PRACTICE MODEL
I removed all the supporting materials in the practice model and combined two wire shape balls up and down. It worked so well that I decided to prit my final model.But when the model is printed, it doesn't look like a pear. It looks like a cracked egg shell.
FINAL MODEL PRODUCTION PROCESS
I printed a larger pear-shaped model and two spheres. But I found that the size of the larger ball I printed was a little too big so I decided to put the ball inside the larger ball to give it a more layered look.
final model and practice model 2.
FINAL MODEL PICTURE
The process: When I made a large model, I found that it was completely different from the small model. The large model looks like it has some smooth texture. I put the light between two double wire shape spheres to make it look even better.
Challenges：I couldn't figure out how to flatten the bottom to make the pear-shaped support, so the first model failed. After I asked the friends and tutor's suggestion, I mmodified the model and make the sphere inside into wire shape. If the pear shape is also solid and the circle inside is also solid, the light may not be able to penetrate through well. But when I finished the practice model, it seemed that there was only one ball inside the pear and it looked very ordinary, so I made a smaller circle and planned to put it on top of the larger circle. I finished the fianl model, I found that the big circle was too big to fit into the pear-shaped model, so I changed my plan again, put the small circle into the big circle and put the lamp in the center of the small circle and Forced into a pear-shape model to finish my final one.
Future improvements:Next time, I will carefully measure the size of each model, draw more design drawings and try more. Arrange the effect of each part. Moreover, I think the pear-shaped model is too simple. If there are more hole circles of different sizes, the effect of illumination will be better after the lamp is put in.
