3D Printed Lamp Shade

After I upgraded my Printrbot with the Matrix Precision X,Y and Z upgrades I now have a build volume of 8"x8"x10" (203mm x 203mm x 250mm). The first thing I tried printing with the expanded print volume was a couple vases.

First out of some junk PLA I'm trying to get rid of:

Blue PLA filament

Then I printed a bigger vase out of E3D's EDGE filament:

E3D EDGE filament in green

I love the way the light shines through it and how the geometric shapes create interesting light and dark areas. I thought these vases might make a neat lamp so I decided as a test to make the blue PLA vase into a lamp to see how it would look.

I had a couple of these IKEA lamp sockets laying around. They looked perfect for this.

I drew lines from corner to corner to find the center. Then I used a stepped drill bit to drill a big hole. I used a half round file to take the hole out to the final size.

It was a bit of a tight fit getting my hand down in there to tighten the ring on to the lamp base.

I hung it up in the garage just to test. Turn on the lamp and turned off the rest of the garage lights. Amazing!!

Here it is with the garage lights on

I think I'm going to make three similar to this and hang them over the bar in my kitchen. I've been wanting to add more light there and I think something like this would look great.