I built this lamp as part of my rapidly upgrading painting setup, to provide light from different angles.

Originally I wanted to build a version of this lamp.

LED Bridge Lamp Universal Segment by Opossums on Thingiverse

However, it’s too big for my workspace, and it’s complex enough that I need to study it some before attempting scaling.

It’s a beautiful lamp, but doesn’t work for my original intent of painting on my primary workbench. It also would take a lot of space to store. I also wanted something I could construct quickly so I would have it available ASAP since I had paints coming in soon.

I did find this one, however:

LED Bridge Light Mini by FeedMePi

I ordered the LED strips and began printing.

Assembly, barring some issues I’ll get to further in this post, was rather straightforward. Cut the LED strips to length at one of the marked locations. Slide it through the guides section by section, coming in where you see the wire in the pictures below. Make sure that the LEDs are facing out of the slot. Then do the final attachment of the sections together.

When finished, set the arch upright, and turn the LEDs on. Then you’ll have lighting from many angles at once while working on your projects.

I did run into a couple issues while building this.

Issue 1: Warping

It’s become apparent that I have some warping issues with my 3D printer that is large enough to print these parts.

I ended up working around this by using a chisel to remove one of the pegs in each section, and using a lot of tape. It’s not perfect, but at least it gets it functional for now until I can reprint it properly.

Issue 2: Height

The arch is a bit short to comfortable use with the painting handle that I use for painting. While priming I don’t think that it’s so big of an issue, as I can easily just use the pucks to hold the mini, but for stability I’m going to want more space for both the stand and the brush in my hand.

To fix this, I designed and printed some extenders to raise the arch up approximately 2 inches. This gives me more space to work with.

They are designed to just stack the arch on top, and route the power cables out the back.

If you want to build one of these lamps with the extender pieces, you can find my extenders here:

Base Extender for LED Bridge Light Mini by Ralnarene

My current hope with this arch is that I will not have to use my workbench lamp on my secondary workbench, and can keep my painting and 3D printing workflows separate as much as possible. I also hope this means I’ll be able to see what I’m painting more clearly without having to move a lamp arm and my head around so much.