Hallo,
On my hobby table, a single printed section didn’t look particularly big. Then I put all seven hexagons together and stood the whole thing up among my paint bottles, figures and helmets. If you want an idea of the size of this lamp, that first test in my hobby room tells the story better than the photo of it on the garage ceiling. Up there, it looks like it belongs. Downstairs among the paint pots, it looked like I’d printed myself out of a workspace. 😄
I built it for the garage where I keep my motorcycles. There’s no mains connection there, but I do have a solar panel and a 12-volt battery. With the garage door open, I get daylight on the side of the bike facing the entrance. It’s a different story when I lean over the other side and my own back blocks what little light was reaching it. That’s where I wanted the light: above the motorcycles, spread over enough of the ceiling to be useful.
I printed the housings in black Sunlu PLA and used transparent filament for the covers. Hidden inside are two LED strips, ten metres in total. The part you’d never guess from looking up at the finished lamp is the aluminium foil. I lined the inside of the black housings with it so some of the light hitting the sides would be reflected back towards the covers. For all the time the printer spent making those parts, one of the materials I ended up using came straight out of the kitchen.
Once the strips were in, I could finally put a number to what the lamp was asking of my solar setup. I measured 5.8 amps at 12.7 volts, which works out to about 74 watts for the whole thing. That figure means more to me than whatever was printed on the LED packaging. If I spend an hour in the garage with the light on, I know roughly what I’ve taken out of the battery. And because the lamp runs on 12 volts, I can leave my inverter switched off.
My favourite part of the setup might be the least impressive thing in the photos: a little white button beside the garage door. It sends a radio signal to the receiver, and a relay switches the LEDs. I didn’t have to run a switch cable back to the entrance. More to the point, the button is right where my hand goes when I walk in. Even after sunset, I can open the garage, reach over and see what I came for.
“Not exactly beautiful, but it works.” That was my verdict when I finished it. I’ll give it a little more credit now. The black printed sections are still visible, and the old ceiling beams haven’t got any prettier. But there’s something I like about standing beside my Honda, looking up, and recognising the very same pieces that were scattered across my hobby table. Usually, when I finish a print, I have to find room for it on a shelf. This one lets me see what’s on the shelf. 😄
What’s one thing you’ve printed or built for your workshop that you’d miss straight away if it were gone?
Greetings from Greifswald on the Baltic coast,
Michael | Hornet on Tour
