Project Highlight — Designing a Replacement Mount for an Ikea Work Lamp

This is a simple build that can be used for any standard work lamp like the one shown below.

If you’re curious, the specific model of the lamp used in this project is the TERTIAL work lamp sold at Ikea. Its steel design features an adjustable arm and head and, in most cases, is usually positioned at the edge of one’s desk.

When looking at the way this lamp is designed, one can see that significant stress is placed on the perpendicular axis to which it is clamped. Through this stress, either one of the flanges on the sides can become cracked or break off completely.

Building from the Original Design

I wanted to create a near exact replica of the original mount, so I first took careful measurements of all the dimensions with my caliper and recreated it in Solidworks. Once it was recreated, I thickened the flanges. Despite this change, it didn’t change the way the forces acted on the mount itself, therefore I made the decision to modify the clamping points. I modified the clamping points by adding more mounting holes. This updated design incorporated a second clamp to go in and, instead of being secured by the middle hole, it is now being secured by the flanges.

Now that the model is completed, I put it through Cura, an open-sourced slicing software that turns 3D models into CNC code (gCode).

The final product was a very sturdy and serviceable replacement part. The beautiful part about it is that I can easily replace or change the design of it again if it breaks.

In this photo, you can see the honeycomb infill inside of the part. It’s set to 20% fill so it’s mostly hollow. The honeycomb pattern keeps the material usage and weight down, while still maintaining strength.

Here’s what it looks like once the print is done!

Here is a side by side comparison of the old mount and the 3D printed mount.

Here it is in action.

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