Soldering Arms From an Old Lamp

For this project I decided to make some soldering arms out of an old lamp that was collecting dust in a closet. I thought the bendy metal from the lamp would be perfect for this project. The arms are not just limited to soldering but can be used in a lot of different ways to hold smaller objects in place!

• Glue (E9000)
• Metal Arms
• 3D printer and filament
• CAD software (Fusion 360)
• Magnets
• Alligator Clips
• Something to cut metal (Metal Chop Saw)

The first step to is to start taking apart the lamp so I can get just the parts I need. I took out all the wires and bulbs so all I had was the metal parts. The base was held together by some screws, so I removed them leaving me with just had the arms and the cone like shapes.

The arms were all attached to a cone like piece which help the bulbs while it was on the lamp, but I did not need this part, so I used a metal chop saw to cut these pieces off. This is the tool that I had on hand but any metal cutting tool should work.

I then used Fusion 360 to model my 3D printed parts that I would glue onto the arms and alligator clips. I got the measurements of the alligator clips, magnets, and metal arms. I decided to design these parts with the loft feature in Fusion 360 because I wanted something that had a nice transitional and sleek look to it. I saved these parts as STL files, sent it through a slicing software, uploaded it to my 3D printer and hit print.

Using the E9000, I glued the magnets and alligator clips to the 3D print parts and waited for them to dry completely which was about 24 hours. The reason I used magnets is because I wanted to be able to stick the arms on a metal surface which would make them fairly portable. I then glued the metal arms to each assembled piece and waited for them to dry too.

The final thing to do was to test the arms out and they work great. The only thing that I might have to change is to buy some stronger magnets because the ones I have now have a hard time holding the arms up. But other than that, I think this project was a success!