Darbin Orvar: A Minimalist Articulated LED Lamp

For quite some time I’ve been wanting a task lamp over my tinker area where I do electronics and design work. I needed the light to be flexible for different tasks, so I thought it would be perfect to design one with articulating arms.

For the light part, I decided to use LED strips, because they’re so easy to use. Plus they’re powered with a remote and it’s always nice to be able to dim. So I cut up a bunch of Baltic Birch plywood for the arms, the connecting parts, and the panel for the lights. I also made some octagon knobs out of plywood which connected the arms together.

To protect the lighting panel, I glued down some magnets in the corners of the wooden LED panel, and glued some metal washers on an acrylic sheet. That way, the acrylic can easily snap on and provide a nice cover.

I also wanted the lighting panel to be replaceable with a different panel if you wanted to change the size. The solution I came up with was to use small magnets which I soldered the wires to. That way one magnet block could be attached to the lighting panel and the other magnet block could be attached to the articulating arms and it would be easy to snap one out and replace it with another without doing any soldering.

All together, this lamp turned out really great. It’s awesome to be able to articulate, and I also added a swinging connection to the wall so the lamp can swivel from side to side as well. What’s cool about this design is that it’s really easy to adapt to your setting, and change the size and the number of the arms for a very custom design to fit your space.