How to Make a 3D Printed Growth Lamp

The Growth lamp is one of the lamps you design in the Studio, Leora's parametric lamp designer, right in your browser. It takes its inspiration from nature: as in some leaves and petals, the rims of its fins grow faster than their middles, so they ruffle as they grow, until they fill out the lamp's round shape. You set how far they grow, how many there are, how they ruffle and twist, which colours they wear and what is written on top, then download the files and print the lamp on your own 3D printer.

As the Studio opens it, the lamp is about 169 mm across and 159 mm tall, with 28 fins. The lampshade prints as one piece, fins, shell and foot together, with a separate LED housing that locks into the foot. The light is Bambu Lab's LED Lamp Kit 001, a 5 V, 3 W warm white LED module on a USB cable, and it shines out between the fins. Older versions of Leora's lamp designs use the Posaluce base from Creative Cables, and an option to use the lamps with Creative Cables' SnakeBis cord set is coming soon.

1. 1Go to Models and scroll to the Studio.
2. 2Choose Growth, the third lamp at the top of the panel.
3. 3Work through the six steps under it: 1 Grow, 2 Shape, 3 Sculpt, 4 Overhang, 5 Colour and 6 Paint.

At the bottom of the stage, the readout shows how many fins the lamp has, its size in millimetres, and whether it prints with supports inside its shell.

The round arrow beside each slider's value resets that slider. Reset, at the top of the stage, resets the whole lamp after asking.

Let it grow is the first slider of the Grow step. At month 0 the fins are flat. As they grow, their rims ruffle, the fins press on each other, and in places they reach further out than the rest. By month 12 they are full grown. The lamp opens at month 6, filling out.

Inspired by nature

In nature, the edges of some leaves and flower petals grow faster than their middles. A lily's petals are one example: as the bud opens, their edges grow longer than their middles and wrinkle, and that growth helps push the flower open. A thin, growing sheet with more length at its edge than its middle can hold flat has to bend out of its plane, so its edge waves and curls.

Let it grow simulates this growth on every fin. Each fin starts flat, and month by month its rim grows faster than its middle, so it ruffles and curls. Where the fins crowd, they press on each other without passing through one another. The Studio grows them in your browser and keeps every month, so you can move back and forth through the growth.

Shuffle

Shuffle, at the top of the stage, grows another lamp with the same settings, so its ruffles come out differently.

• Density

  What it does

  Sets how many fins the lamp has.

  Range

  16 to 52 fins (28 to start)

• Ruffles

  What it does

  Ruffles the fins in a few broad waves or in many fine ones.

  Range

  Broad to fine (as grown, in the middle, to start)

• Lobes

  What it does

  Lets some parts of the fins reach further out than the rest, all round the lamp.

  Range

  None to strong (none to start)

• Lobe size

  What it does

  Sets how large those parts are: many small lobes, or a few large ones.

  Range

  Small to large (medium to start)

• Smooth

  What it does

  Calms the fins' ruffles, the smallest waves first. The fins keep their outline and their lobes.

  Range

  As grown to calm, 0 to 100%

• Twist

  What it does

  Turns the lamp round its middle, more the higher up, so the fins lean into a spiral.

  Range

  60° left to 60° right (none to start)

• Height

  What it does

  Stretches the lamp upward. The socket, the LED housing and the shell inside keep their size.

  Range

  159 to 191 mm (159 mm to start)

• Thickness

  What it does

  Sets how thick the fins print.

  Range

  1.2 to 2.4 mm (1.2 mm to start)

At 1.2 mm, a fin prints as three lines of a 0.4 mm nozzle. Thicker fins are stiffer and let less light through.

With Height at its highest, the lamp is about 169 mm across and 191 mm tall. If it no longer fits a printer, the Download sheet greys that printer out and says why when you press it.

1. 1In the Shape step, scroll to Add logo and press On. Leora's logo appears as a placeholder.
2. 2Press Upload and choose your logo. A PNG with a clear background works best, and JPEG, WebP and SVG files work too.
3. 3Drag Logo size to set the logo's width, from 12 to 30 mm. It starts at 16 mm.
4. 4Open Logo colour and choose As the lamp to print the logo in the lamp's colour, or Its own to give it a spool of its own.

The logo stands on a very thin base set into the fins at the top of the lamp, and shows best from above. Very thin lines are thickened so that they print.

A logo in its own colour adds a spool. One AMS holds four, and the Studio tells you when your lamp needs more than that.

• Drag moves the part of the fins under the brush with your hand: a larger brush moves more of them, and further.
• Ruffle deepens the fin's ruffles where you hold the brush.
• Smooth calms them.
• Restore brings what is under the brush back toward how it grew.

Brush size goes from 16 to 80 mm, and starts at 40 mm. On a keyboard, − and + change it. Strength, from 10 to 100%, sets how firmly the brush takes hold of the fins, and how quickly Ruffle, Smooth and Restore work. Undo, Redo and Clear all are under the tools.

What is under the brush follows it, the fin around it bends smoothly and pushes its neighbours aside, and it keeps the shape you gave it when you let go. When the lamp grows again, your strokes are repeated on its new fins.

A 3D printer builds each layer on the one below, so a surface that leans out too flat has nothing underneath it. The slicer adds supports there: temporary structures that you break off after printing. Its support threshold angle decides which surfaces get them, as Bambu Studio's guide explains.

1. 1Open 4 Overhang and set Show overhangs to On. What would need support turns red.
2. 2Set Limit to your slicer's support threshold angle, from 10° to 45°. It starts at 20°, and the project you download uses the same angle.
3. 3Drag Lift to the right. It raises the fins' lowest edges and the top inside the shell, and calms the ruffles that lean the most. At 100%, marked No overhang, the shell prints without supports inside.

The panel says what is left: the share of the fins that needs support at your Limit, and whether the shell needs support inside, under its top. At the 20° the Studio starts with, the fins need none. Lift starts at 75%, which still leaves supports inside the shell, and at 100% there are none. Outside, the slicer may still add a few small supports under the fins' lowest edges.

A higher Limit asks more of the lamp: at 45°, 0.2% of the fins need support, and the shell needs support inside even with Lift at 100%. A lower limit or a taller lamp lets it print without.

Supports stay switched on in the project, as tree supports, so anything that still needs one gets it.

In the Colour step, first choose the material, PLA or PETG. Then choose a style for the whole lamp:

• Organic: colours painted onto the fins in a leaf pattern. Choose one of 9 Organic presets, named after leaves, from Lollo Rosso and Ginkgo to Caladium and Croton, or one of 5 two-colour presets, such as Monstera and Sea glass.
• Stripes: bands of colour up the lamp, each colour change set in the project at its exact height. Choose one of 12 Stripe presets, and with Repeat, run the palette up the lamp 1, 2, 3, 4, 8 or 16 times for more, thinner stripes.
• One colour: the whole lamp in one spool, like the white lamp in the photos.

Each colour of a palette has its own row: press it to choose another spool for that part of the lamp. The shell inside the fins uses the One colour spool, and the presets put it on white, so the light stays white. The Studio counts the spools your lamp needs, including a logo in its own colour, and tells you when that is more than the four that one AMS holds.

Stripes and Organic are multicolour prints: they change filament while the lamp prints, so they need a printer that changes filament on its own, such as one with an AMS. Organic needs every colour in every layer, so the printer changes filament more often than with Stripes: it prints slower and purges more.

PLA Basic and PLA Translucent can be mixed on one lamp. PETG doesn't bond well with PLA, so a PETG lamp is PETG Translucent throughout.

• Tide: the accent colour rises from the foot to a wavy line.
• Edge: the accent colour along the rim of every fin, its inner line wavy, like a leaf's margin.
• Pattern: Veins, which fan out from the shell and fork towards the rim, as on a ginkgo leaf; Heart, a colour round the shell that reaches out along the fins in points, like the heart of a caladium leaf; Streaks, from the shell to the rim, as on a variegated leaf; Blush, a colour along the rim that breaks up as it fades inwards, like the red edge of a lettuce leaf; or Dots, round dots in three sizes.
• None, Some or Many: how much of the pattern there is.
• Scale: makes the pattern larger, up to 250%.

The tools

• Brush paints where you drag. Choose a colour, a pattern and the brush size, from 6 to 40 mm. On a keyboard, − and + change the size.
• Fill paints a whole fin, or the shell. Click a fin to fill it, or drag across fins to fill each of them.
• Picture lays a picture or a shape on the lamp. Choose a picture of your own, or one of eight shapes: Nautilus, Ginkgo, Butterfly, Jellyfish, Mandala, Snowflake, Fern and Lotus. Drag on the lamp to move it, set Picture size and Turn, then press Place.
• Eraser takes paint away, and takes a fin's fill off when you click the fin. Undo, Redo and Clear all are just under the tools.

Patterns and colours

Besides Solid, the brush paints Dots, Veins, Maze, Net, Rings, Rim or Spray, each in three sizes: Small, Medium and Large. Rings and Rim follow the rims of the fins, and Spray is fine specks that thin out at the stroke's edge. The colour row suggests spools that stand out on your lamp, and the plus button opens every spool.

The paint stays on the fins: when they grow, twist or are sculpted, it moves with them. A fin is thin, so both of its sides show the paint. A lamp takes four paint colours, each in any pattern and size, sixteen styles in all, and three pictures.

A painted lamp prints as Organic does: the printer changes filament more often, so it is slower and purges more.

• Turn: drag the lamp.
• Move: right-drag, or hold Shift and drag.
• Zoom: scroll, or use the zoom buttons on the stage.
• On a phone or tablet: drag with one finger to turn, drag with two fingers to move, and pinch to zoom.

The button with four arrows shows these moves, and its Centre the lamp button brings the lamp back to the middle.

Full screen

The full screen button, under the view button, lets the Studio fill your screen. Press it again, or press Esc, to exit full screen.

Without an account, your lamps are kept in this browser only. When you sign in, they are kept in your account, and lamps you saved in the browser move into it.

1. 1Press Download at the bottom of the panel.
2. 2Check the nozzle: the Growth is made for a 0.4 mm nozzle, so 0.4 mm is chosen.
3. 3Choose your printer's bed: A1 mini (180 × 180 mm), A1 (256 × 256 mm), P1S and X1 (256 × 256 mm), A2L (330 × 320 mm), or H2D, H2S and H2C (330 × 320 mm). A printer that your lamp doesn't fit is greyed, and says why when you press it.
4. 4Turn on Also include STL files if you use a slicer other than Bambu Studio or OrcaSlicer, for example with a printer of another brand.
5. 5Press Download. By downloading, you accept the license for this lamp: the files may never be shared or sold.

The sheet also says whether your lamp prints with supports inside its shell, and that Lift, all the way up in the Overhang step, prints it without.

The folder holds:

• Your lamp's 3MF file: the project for Bambu Studio and OrcaSlicer. Plate 1 is the lamp and plate 2 is the LED housing, with Bambu Lab's printer, process and filament presets set and the colours in place.
• The Growth's printing and assembly instructions, as a PDF.
• Filaments.txt: your lamp's filaments, numbered as the project numbers them.
• License.pdf: the license you downloaded under.
• For other slicers (STL): the lamp and the LED housing as STL files, if you asked for them. STL files carry no colours.

The A1 mini prints a one-colour Growth lamp up to 180 mm tall. A lamp in more than one colour needs room for the prime tower beside it, so it needs a 256 mm bed or larger.

The 3MF project opens in Bambu Studio or OrcaSlicer with every setting in place. With any other slicer, use the STL files and these main settings:

• Nozzle

  Value

  0.4 mm

• Layer height

  Value

  0.20 mm, first layer 0.20 mm

• Walls

  Value

  3, with the Arachne wall generator for the lamp, so that a 1.2 mm fin prints as three lines

• Infill

  Value

  25% gyroid in the lamp, 15% in the LED housing

• Top surface pattern

  Value

  Concentric

• Speeds

  Value

  Outer walls 60 mm/s, inner walls 160 mm/s, slow down for overhangs on

• Supports

  Value

  On, Tree, threshold angle at your Limit (20° to start), top Z distance 0.23 mm

• Build plate

  Value

  Textured PEI, with a thin layer of glue

• Filament

  Value

  PLA or PETG; the Studio's colours are Bambu Lab PLA Basic, PLA Translucent and PETG Translucent

The settings of the project you download. On the A1, the project also slows down gradually as the lamp grows taller, from 60 mm/s at 120 mm to 30 mm/s at 164 mm. Fine-tune the settings for your printer, filament and room.

• A 3D printer with a bed of at least 180 × 180 mm. The download has ready projects for Bambu Lab's 180 × 180, 256 × 256 and 330 × 320 mm beds, and STL files for any other printer.
• A 0.4 mm nozzle.
• PLA or PETG filament in your lamp's colours. Every colour in the Studio is a Bambu Lab spool; other brands work too, but print quality, fit and the way light comes through may vary. Leora's instructions recommend PLA Basic in Jade White.
• For more than one colour (Organic, Stripes, paint, or a logo in its own colour): a printer that changes filament on its own, such as one with an AMS, and the 3MF project, because STL files carry no colours.
• The Bambu Lab LED Lamp Kit 001, often called the Bambu lamp kit, and a certified 5 V USB power adapter, or a USB port.
• A glue stick for the build plate.

Designing in the Studio is free. Downloading the Growth lamp is included in the Plus and Pro plans. Plus includes 100 customizations a year for personal use, and Pro includes 1,000 together with a commercial license to print and sell lamps worldwide.

The Studio also designs the Coral and the Bloom: read how to make a 3D printed Coral lamp, and how the Bloom prints with almost no supports.