Des 100 assignment 2:  Desk Lamp

 For my second assignment for Des100, I was tasked with designing and prototyping a lamp for a friend or family member. I chose to design my lamp for my Dad, who needed a way to light up his whole room, because his current lights are too dim, and are making his office feel like a dungeon. Due to his love of technology and science fiction films, I designed a lamp inspired by the future, taking inspiration from both Star Wars as well as various other lamps online. To fulfill the requirement of “lighting up his whole room” I decided to combine a traditional desk lamp with an extendable camping lantern, creating a lamp that could both be used for reading/writing as well as for brightening up the whole room. This is the main strength of my light, and it’s primary advantage over other desk lights. The two joints also allow my light to rotate forward and back, allowing the user to angle the lamp in a multitude of different directions. I designed the visualization prototype in tinker-cad, and the specification prototype in fusion 360, two programs that I have never worked in before. While this can, unfortunately, be seen in the finished images, hopefully as I continue to work in these programs, my skills will increase. One improvement that is needed with my model is the width and length of the base, with it looking too large for the rest of my lamp. While I did somewhat base my lamp’s dimensions on another lamp my Dad had previously, evidently I made a mistake when it came to the size of the base. Hopefully I can rectify this problem in the future. Another improvement that needs to be made, is a way of stopping the camping light from being fully pulled out when extended. One possible solution would be to install a slightly thicker ring of plastic at both the bottom of this extendable tube as well as around the area of where this tube extends from, allowing the extension of the camping light while preventing the tube from coming fully out. 

​