Modern-looking 3D printed G-Scale street lamps

Finally! After weeks and weeks of planning, prototyping and 3D printing, my very own street lamps for my garden layout are finally here. And I have to say I'm truly proud to be able to present my creation to all of you.

Let me first share a little about how this project came to life. The reason why I even attempted designing my own road-side lamp model was very simple - I needed one for my 3D printer and couldn't find any. That's how I decided to create my own from scratch.

I've started by working in Blender. And since this phase took around 10 evenings, I've actually managed to learn the tool a little. It's fun working there, maybe except for the unpredictable Undo function. Solution: save often.

The design phase was not just about sitting in front of my computer. It required prototyping and a lot of it. Preparing a blueprint for something that looks good is one thing, but having it print well is something else.

Here are some of my early tests...

But I knew I was making progress all the time. And every next iteration of my lamp was better than the previous one. Two weeks later I finally had a prototype I was happy with.

My lamp is empty on the inside which allows wiring and resistor installation. The head features two micro-holes which fit a 5mm LED light source very well. It's really easy to use!

This is what my first fully functional piece looked like.

After that it was all about mass production. A single lamp takes about 3 hours to print (1.5 hour per side). I was printing only one per day which means I've spent around two weeks making those...

Wiring them up and gluing took another week. It could have been done faster if the time I spend on my hobby had not been limited...

Installation of the lamps on my road elements consumed most of my Saturday. Actually, I've finished the work when it was getting very dark already. In the end it turned out pretty well, because it allowed me to see the outcome of my actions very clearly. Here's what I saw once I turned the power on:

As we can see, placing the lamps straight is something I've yet to master. But it does look very, very good overall, especially for something I have made myself from scratch!

I have again shared my design on-line. If you want to try making the lamp yourself, here's the link: http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:2220722

I also want to bring up the topic of the cost...

1kg of printing filament can be bought for as little as $15. The lamp weights less than 15g which means we could easily make 65 pieces out of 1kg. The conclusion is that a single lamp's body costs around $0.23 (+electricity).

The model requires an LED, a resistor and some wire. 100 LEDs can be bought on Ebay for less than $3, 100 resistors for around $1. I've bought the cables locally and paid less than $0.15 per meter.

So putting the cost of the electricity, the glue and the solder aside, we can estimate one piece costs less than $0.50 plus your time. I honestly don't think there's a way to equip your layout with working lamp posts cheaper than this. How could I not recommend it then? Just go for it!