I was annoyed at how gloomy one corner of our guest room gets, so I had the idea to put my old bedside lamp in the darkest corner.
The lampshade disintegrated the second I picked it up, because it turns out that's what happens 12-14 years into the life cycle of the cheapest lamp Ikea had at the time. The rest of the lamp was fine. The original LED light bulb I put in when I got it is still fine. Ikea still makes the lamp, but it's so cheap, you can't get replacement shades for it.
There's a free STL to print a one, but the base is, annoyingly, one cm wider than my printer's max dimensions in every direction except vertical. So. Either I pay someone to print a piece to repair a lamp I paid four bucks for. Or. I drive 4 hours with a roll of filament to a friend who has a bigger printer. Or. I cut up a model that is too thin to feasibly accept connectors of any kind, and think outside the box.
My roll-o-random-miscolor-for-a-rock-bottom-price rPLA had come up beige, so I figured I had something that would work but with which I could afford to goof up a little. And I did. A weird seam placement ruined my first print. The third randomly failed (I was too lazy to clean my print plate) by the second layer.
But 13 hours and a bit of ribbon later, I have used three decades' of 21st century design and technology and advancement to... make an early 1980s lampshade.
The total price in filament is below that of any table lamp Ikea currently sells, and I didn't have to drive or travel or pay shipping or trash a perfectly functional lamp. If the base breaks, I did not use glue on the two halves, so they are fully recyclable, and... There's a print that fits my print bed to reuse the guts of this.
