Celebrities love good lighting. The music-world icons who attended the recent 66th Annual Grammy Awards were no exception. Yet, the 56 tiny tables where they were seated posed a challenge. The table lamps needed to be small, yet bright enough for television cameras to capture the winners’ expressions while, at the same time, emitting a flattering glow.
California-based Terra Labs, a young 3D printed lamp design studio, rose to the challenge.
Led by designer Fernando Silva, a former production engineer at the 3D printer and material reseller MatterHackers, Terra Labs offers half a dozen lamp designs on their site and also sold vie Etsy, which is where the set designers of the Grammy awards discovered them and their “Stance” lamp.
“We sent them a few samples so that the lighting and camera operators could give us their feed back,” says Silva. Unfortunately Silva’s Stance lamp wouldn’t fit. There needed to be a top cover on each unit to reduce over exposure for the cameras and the cable had to go straight through bottom so it would fit through the center hole of the table.
Yet, because the lamps are 3D printed, quick design changes were no problem. “Thanks to 3D printing, we were able to make the changes within a week,” says Silva. The 56 table lamps were 3D printed, assembled, and delivered in just two weeks.
For the Grammy lamps, Terra Labs used eSun filament and printing was carried out on a combination of their own printer designed in-house and a few Bambu lab P1Ps. During the broadcast, lighting designers controlled the brightness.
Terra Labs promotes sustainability as much as elegance in design. “Every design we create has the entire product’s lifecycle in mind,” says Silva. This starts with plant-based raw materials (PLA plastic), includes a modular design with the right to repair, and ends with the ability to properly recycle all of the components.
“3D printing is a low-waste production method and we make sure that all of packaging is compostable or recyclable,” says Silva. “We also try to use as much recycled filament as possible and our goal is continue expanding into the furniture space.”
If you’d like your own Grammy-style 3D printed lamp, the Stance retails for $85.
“I think this story really highlights how far 3D printing has come and how printed objects are taken seriously as end use products,” Silva adds.
License: The text of "Taylor Swift Basked in the Glow of a 3D Printed Lamp at the Grammys" by All3DP Pro is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.