Lab Vial Lamp

A while back I found a picture of this picture, I presume this is a packaging design for spaghetti. This instantly gave me the idea to turn it onto a lamp. The spaghetti really looks like warm white LED filament. I thought this looked really cool and that it would look great as a desk lamp. 

Parts

24 Glass vials with a cork top (150mm) [Link]

These are the vials that the LED filament will be housed in. I chose glass because it looks and feels nicer. I’ve had issues with cracking plastic tubes in the past so figured glass would be the higher quality option of the two. It is more expensive by quite a bit, but I think it is worth it. 

24 LED Filament (70mm) [Link]

The LED filaments are the spaghetti lookalike light source. 70mm was the longest I could find without it being a flexible one so I based the design around it. 

24 Brass tubes (4x32mm) [no link, locally bought]

These brass tubes will place the LED filament lower in the glass tube. If this wasn’t used only half of the tube would be used. This wouldn’t have looked very nice. The brass tube also works to neatly route all the wires. 

48 small pieces of multi core audio cable (4+mm) [no link, locally bought]

These pieces of wire will work as ways to solder the LED filament and wire to the brass tubing. 

0.1mm enameled copper/jumper wire [Link not exact same]

This wire will be almost invisible and be used to power the LED filament. With some clever routing you’ll think it was wireless. 

3mm thick acrylic [no link, locally bought]

Sheet used for the frame in which the vials will be held. 

Sheet of MDF [no link, locally bought]

While I would have loved to make the housing for the electronics out of something that looked better this is what I had on hand. 

Protoboard PCB [Link]

Onto this PCB all the jumper wires will be soldered and connected to the power supply. 

Power supply [no link, electronics bin]

This light will require more than the 2 amps that USB can provide. Because of this a wall outlet power supply will be required. 

Step down converter [Link]

At least in my case. My power supply is 15V and this needs to be stepped down to 3V. You could also solder the LED filament in series to make the voltage required higher. 

Power switch [No link, electronics bin]

You’ll have to be able to turn the lamp on and off no? 

Tools 

In this section I am going to list all the tools I used to build the project. These tools were used because they were what I had. If you have more or less advanced tools find a way to adapt the project to suit your needs. 

Soldering Iron: 

Obviously, you are going to need a soldering iron to connect all the parts together. 

Wire Cutter: 

The wire cutter is needed to cut wires to length, truth be told scissors can also be used. 

Wire Stripper: 

A wire stripper is needed to make the wire ready to be soldered. 

Laser Cutter: 

A laser cutter is needed to cut the acrylic panel. 

Jigsaw: 

You’re going to need a jigsaw to cut the wood panels. 

CNC:  

A CNC will be needed to make the indentations in the brass tubes. 

Drill: 

The drill will be used to drill the holes in the cork for the brass tube. 

Table Saw: 

I used a table saw to cut the pieces of brass tube. 

Calipers: 

If you want to measure something accurately, this is the way to do it. 

Torch: 

I needed a torch to burn away the protective layer of enamel over the .1mm copper wire. 

Consumables 

In this section I am going to list the consumables needed in this project. 

Wire: 

We are going to need some wire to connect every component. 

Solder: 

Solder is needed to solder all the components to the purfboard or each other.

The first thing I decided to do is to make a bunch of prototypes to check what would give the best result in terms of looks. My first prototype was just a simple LED to see if the 0.1mm wire could take the power requirements needed for the lamp.  

My second prototype was an LED soldered to a brass tube. The reason for the prototype was to check of the brass tube would conduct electricity and if it was possible to thread a wire through the tube. I didn’t know for sure if it would create a short or not. In the end it didn’t, and this set my course for future prototypes. 

The third prototype are 2 short LED filaments soldered in series. These two filaments were supposed to simulate the looks of a longer filament. In the end I soldered the filaments to the outside of the brass tube. It left a lump of solder that was ugly and made it hard to place the brass tube in the cork top.  

The prototype after that was almost the same. This is the first time I made a slot in the side of the brass tube. The reason I made this slot was to place one lead of the filament in there to eliminate the solder lump. This didn’t work out so well. It was very difficult to get the lead to stay in the slot and the solder wouldn’t take very well to the inside. This meant there was still a lump of solder.  

The fifth prototype continues to iterate on the slot in the brass tube. This time the slot was cut in both sides of the brass tube. This way a small brass wire could be placed in those slots. The LED filament was soldered to the brass wire and the brass wire was soldered to the brass tube. With a pair of wire cutter I was able to cut the solder lump flush with the tube and BINGO! The solder had attached itself to the brass tube. It was a solid mechanical connection that looked nice as well. Another thing that I improved was to wrap the .1mm wire around the filament. This way it wouldn’t loosely dangle around looking all unkempt.  

Prototype six and seven were small improvements to get the filament straighter and more centered in the tube. I ended up using the multi core audio cable wire instead of the small brass wire. This because it would such the solder up way better and make a better connection. Another reason was because I could place the lead for the filament in the center of the wire and solder it in place. I did this by splitting the wire in two bundles and placing them at either side of a lead. Then I would twist them together like shown above. This is an attempt to make the LED filament even more centered. It didn’t make it perfectly centered but made it better.

Since all the individual vials needed the exact same parts I decided to make kits. These kits consisted of a vial, a piece of LED filament, a brass tube, a cork and 2 pieces of wire. I made the kits with templates. The first template was the length of brass tube. The way I made these was by setting my calipers to the exact length I wanted, being 32mm. I measured the distance between the table saw stopper and the edge of the blade and locked the stopper at that distance. With this all the brass tubes will be the same length. This will also mean that I can use repeatable steps in the stage where I have to cut all the slots. 

The second template I made was one for the wires. I was going to need 48 of those, so any waste would have been multiplied many times over. I didn’t have some sort of exact measurement needed. I needed more than 4mm to bridge the brass tube and wanted some extra to make it way easier to solder. I had a small brass tube leftover and cut it to length. When I wanted to cut a piece of wire I placed it inside the brass tube and use wire cutter to cut it along the top.

Right now, you might be thinking: “Paper model? Why would you need that?”. You need it to check your design before you start making cuts in expensive and limited material. When you start everything looks perfect on paper or in CAD, however in the physical world things can look a lot different. I made the paper model out of 2 parts. The first part I made is the vial holder. The second part I made was the wooden holder. I made this model to check what it would look like when I finally build the light.  

After I finished, I found that there were a few design aspects that I really didn't like. The first of these was the way that the vials were being held.  As you can see above the only thing that is visible on the top is a small piece of cork. At first, I wanted this so that I didn't need any support bars at the bottom. After making the paper prototype however I found that this was really ugly and decided to work in bottom supports somehow.  

The second thing that I realized is that the height of the wooden housing that I chose was way too high. It sticks out like a sore thumb. I knew this had to come down. I didn't know by how much so I left that for a later time in the design. 

The third and last thing that I realized was that my measurements were all off! I changed the distance between the center of all the holes from 30mm to 20mm, I reduced the space between the two plates, I increased the size of the holes and gave them a 0.1mm tolerance. 

With production I mean making all the parts that need to be assembled. This is kind of the first step of assembly, but consists of a lot of repetitive actions.  

The first thing that needs to be made is the acrylic holder for the vials. I made a CAD model and exported it to a DXF. Making use of the utilities at my disposal I made use of the laser cutter at my school. I thought about making this part by hand with a drill and a rotary tool. I can assure you that this would have been a bad idea on my part. It would have looked awful and been out of alignment. I'm so glad I did it this way. If you don't have access to a school laser cutter I would suggest going to see if your local makerspace has one available. Another way you could cut it is with a CNC router. None of the features are extremely small and wouldn't be too difficult to cut.  

The second part I made ware the brass tube with the indents at both ends. This went fairly easily. I made a jig for the CNC by drilling a hole in a piece of wood where the brass tube would fit in. When I wanted to cut a slot in the tube, I just pushed it in the hole and could use a repeatable motion to cut all of the slots on the same place. I wanted both slots to be mirrored so when turning the tube around in the jig I made sure that the first slot was as straight as possible. All in all, cutting all the slots cost me about an hour. At the end I had 24 brass tubes with mirrored slots in them ready for soldering.  

Soldering them can be a hassle. I took the wires I cut for the kit and took the housing off, soldered it all up and placed it in the slot. After that I placed some fresh solder on my soldering iron and just heated up the entire brass tube until the solder stuck to it. When it did I waited for it to cool off. After that I used wire cutters to cut off the excess wire and solder. Cutting it flush. 

After the brass tubes were made, I decided to focus on the cork tops. These were easy to make. I eyeballed the center of the cork and marked it with a fine liner. I used a cordless drill to drill all the holes through the cork since my drill press is broken, but if you have access to one I would highly recommend you to make use of it! You don't want to know how many crooked holes I've gotten. A lot of the brass tubes are off angle inside of the glass tube, this doesn't look very nice. Luckily you can bend the leads on the LED filament a little to compensate for it. Because cork is so soft you can place it at an angle inside of the glass vial as well. I did these things to get the LED filament as straight as possible in there.  

The last thing I made before assembling is the power board. The power supply I'm using is an old laptop one. It outputs 15V and a max of 4A. The 15V is way too much for the LED filament, they need 3V. Because of this a step-down convert is needed, this converter will take the 15V given and turn it into a 3V output. Because the convert can only supply a max of 2A there are going to be multiple needed. I just split the input in two and wired it up to the two inputs on the stepdown converts. The outputs were wired to two different halves of the power board. This way one converter powered half of the LEDs aka 12 of them.

Now that all the parts have been made it’s time to assemble them into the final product. The first thing that will need to be assembled is the frame. I slotted the acrylic parts together and used cyanoacrylate glue to bind them together. Be careful that this glue doesn't go anywhere and that it's dry before handling the frame. If you get some glue on your fingers and touch the frame it will leave a permanent mark on the frame. I learned this the very hard lesson and have multiple smudges and finger prints on the frame that I can't remove. Luckily the vials will obscure them somewhat so it isn't that bad. When you've glued the frame together cut out an MDF panel one cm from the frame on all sides except the bottom. After you've done that glue the acrylic frame to the MDF plate. I know it's not optimal to glue it to the place since you'll clearly see that it has been glued in. At first, I wanted to make slots and have it slide in but that would have looked way worse and taken way more time. I drilled a hole in the bottom if the MDF plate for the wires to go through.  

When that was all set and done, I started work on the vials. This is a super tedious job! First off, I cut a long strand of the .1mm wire. This is important! Use a lighter to burn away a some of the protective coating on the wire if you want it to make an electrical connection. I threaded the end of the wire through the small hole in the lead of the LED filament. After that I wound the wire around the lead a few times to make sure it won't come out again. To make the light look nice and not have a wire dangling inside of the glass tube I twisted the wire around the LED filament. This looks super clean! I thread the wire through the brass tube and pull it out of the top. After that I solder another wire to the top piece of soldered wire. 

I took both wires and threaded them from the top to the bottom through the holes for the vials. With the help of a pair of tweezers this was doable. Next, I threaded the same wires thought he hole in the MDF. Last thing to do is to test the wires and solder them to the power PCB. After repeating this 24 times and connected all the pads together to make a long "wire” to connect all lights. To finish the electronics, I hot glued all the electronics to the MDF plate.  

Lastly, I cut a few more MDF slabs to complete the enclosure. In the back one of these, I drilled 2 holes. The first one was for the power cable and the second one is for the switch. 

In this section I'm going to highlight a few problems I had and what I learned.  

The first problem I had was the size of the holes for the vials. I measured 1 vial to get the radius for the holes. I did not realize that these glass vials could slightly differ in size. When I encountered this problem, the frame was already glued together. To solve it I had one option, grab a file and get to work. I had to be careful not to damage the frame too much while filing or to put too much force on the frame and brake it apart. It did work however and only 2 holes needed filing. 

The second problem was with the lighting. I tested all the LED filament bars in multiple phases while building. The first time was straight out of the package to eliminate DOA parts, the second time was after soldering it to the brass tube and the third and last time was after installing the vial but before soldering it to the power board. I did this mostly to figure out what wire was connected to what pole. It worked periodically but I knew that it would. My wire clips didn't work well with the thin wires but as long as it powered up even a bit, I knew it worked. At the end I powered the light on but only a few lamps worked. In the end I had to de-solder a lot of them and do some clever wiring to get it to work. 

The things I learned were mostly on the topic of design. Prototyping not only the workings of something but also the looks will pay itself off in droves at the end. The few days I worked on making the lights look this good was well worth it.  

Another thing I learned was to work with kits and jigs. If you have to make to make the same thing over and over again use a jig! If you, don't it'll be impossible to get the same result every time. Kits will reduce the time you need to make something. If you need a bunch of the same part, you can set your tools to make it and make them all at one. With this you avoid having to reset your tool constantly and going to search for the stuff you need over and over again.  

The third thing I learned was to not always go with the cheapest stuff. The first time I tried to laser cut the acrylic I used a place I got at the thrift store. The results I got will haunt me forever. The acrylic just burned and came out really nasty, not to mention all the smoke it released. 

In the end I didn't manage to get all the LED filaments working and didn't manage to build the entire case. I'm definitely going to revisit this project purely focused on making it look amazing!

If you like this project and are interested in more projects like this one you can find me on Twitter and Instagram.