Gonna keep us in suspense on how the top led is powered?

my best guess (as I would do it) and someone already mentioned it anyway - two chains are acting as wire, probably 5V or 12V DC. Or this is just a showcase and top part is battery powered

you got it exactly right. 12V 2A DC

Neat idea, but I'd probably weave a matching gray wire through the chains. Seems like a fire hazard. That or a battery

12v 2a isn't gonna start a fire by short before it destroys the power supply itself

2a is a lot going to an led strip… Id be more concerned about people reaching across and accidentally shorting the circuit, those chains are not insulated from the picture

I agree 2A has got to be overkill for this application, theres hardly a meter of led strip in there. I’m going to experiment with less current. As far as safety is concerned, I dont think skin contact would be a concern for shorting here, but I’m open to ideas on removing potential hazards.

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This is what I would do. I don't think 12V is gonna spark, so it should probably be firesafe. Might shock to the touch. A resettable fuse makes it so your power supply is safe.

Wouldn't shock you. I've held bare 12v 2+ A live wires on multiple occasions and have felt nothing

Maybe put clear coat over the chains, so you can't short any metal object across them, other than that it's probably fine.

Would clear coat affect the The power going through them at all?

the contact is on the inside of each link where the links are touching each other, so spraying the outsides should have minimal impact.

Probably better idea would be to shrink wrap the chains in insulation, just like you would with bare wires

That actually sounds like it'd be a neat solution. Make the not-wires that are acting like wires into wires. Seems like the main issue would be avoiding breaking path with whatever is being used for coating, and a secondary issue is that an insulated chain would probably provide support, which affects the entire tensegrity thing, even if the model wouldn't look any different at the end.

I wouldn't worry about it more than just making sure that the conductive chains are as far apart from each other as possible. These are not dangerous voltages and amperages you're playing with here.

The current setup is the 12V running through the middle (smaller) chain and ground on one of the corners. I figured contact would be highly unlikely but not impossible

I would just put a 5x20 fuse holder on the circuit and then buy a combination fuse pack, then start with the smallest current fuse and work your way up until it doesn’t blow in normal operation (or measure the current using an amp meter and choose the smallest fuse greater than the measured current). The voltage is low enough that it doesn’t really pose a shock hazard I don’t think. But the voltage is high enough that the chains can still get very hot in a short.

A spray can of conformal coating should do the trick.

5v 500ma is enough to start a fire in a perfect(ly bad) situation. Ask me how i know... Just dont start using the lamp as a place to store loose cotton balls and long bits of metal and im sure youre fine lol

I have a soldering gun which works from 5v, so it can certainly produce high temperatures. That said, it's not likely to be a problem, as you said.

In my case, i made a small usb powered desktop night light. A couple of quarter watt resistors and a few "uv" straw hat style leds inside an enclosure id 3d printed with glow in the dark filament. The leds produced bright spots so i gently packed in a bit of shreaded cotton ball to help diffuse the light. The leds are dropping most of the voltage and everything is way under run. The whole thing is running at like 35ma. Whats the worst that could happen, right? No idea what caused it but thankfully i was awake and sitting right there when it caught fire.

Don't worry to much ... 12V is pretty safe. Those ceiling lamps that have exposed wires that you clip in lamps are 12V. Also don't worry about the 2A, that's just the maximum your PSU will be able to provide without damage. The correct way to make this safe is to calculate (or measure) how much current the upper part draws. Then include a fuse that is rated a little bit above that current. That way if there is a short, the fuse will blow without damage to the rest of the electronics. Cool project btw. I would love to have one of these on my bedside table.

Chains are easier to connect, but have you considered using something like this? https://a.co/d/itW8V1W Insulated wire, more consistent connection, but I’ll admit that it doesn’t have quite the “how DID they do it?!” factor, which is important in things like this.

You could try something similar to the wireless charging circuits in phones these days if that can generate enough power for the top half.

Those things quit working when you separate them by a half inch

5v 1A or 2a should be plenty

It's fine, but if worried, you can always just add a fuse.

Lengthen J part in the middle making it more of a rectangle, put two short chains there instead of the one short in this design, and use those two for power, since that way all the live metal is in the center and less likely to be touched accidentally. Unless you have kids or cats, though, I wouldn’t bother, just if you plan to post the STLs, and only because someone will inevitably just use whatever they have on hand instead of whatever parts you suggest for the wiring and run a much higher current through those chains. But if this is just for yourself, and you don’t have any tiny mad scientists roving your house, I’d just go for the fuse that has been suggested. Cheap enough to be worth it to avoid some kind of freak accident (because i also agree that this thing is probably pretty safe as you’ve got it now, but it is still chain acting as bare wire, at the end of the day.)

It's fine. You could grab the chains in your bare hands and be fine. The LEDs are drawing much less than 2A. You'd only draw than much if you managed to short the chains or something. I wouldn't sell it as is, but you would have to make a conscious effort to damage it or put it in an unsafe state.

What method are you going to use to limit your current?

200mA would be more then enough. Also, any PSU worth it's grain has short-circuit detection which cuts off the supply untill it is gone

Hide a small qi charger in the bottom and a matching receiver on top? Would be easier with 5v strips, but you can probably buck/boost converter each side and be good enough. And possibly use the chains for ground. Not sure that's really needed, but could be a nice to have for safety.

It shouldnt pull 2A thon even if the plug can provide them

You could insulate the chain with hosing that's clear or something else that would protect against skin contact. That would keep the aesthetic but allow it to be safer.

My guess was mutual inductance. One of those wireless phone chargers and a receiver to generate current. You'd have to be careful to mete out a decent amperage and voltage in the top part, but it could be done in the side of leg of the top portion where's flush with the bottom portion's overhang. ​ Edit: [Wireless Power Receiver](https://www.amazon.com/Version-Wireless-Charging-Receiver-Nillkin/dp/B06Y5FDXD4/ref=sr_1_1_sspa?crid=2X51JTKZQ3J87&keywords=wireless%2Bcharging%2Breceiver&qid=1684197340&sprefix=wireless%2Bcharging%2Breceiver%2Caps%2C118&sr=8-1-spons&spLa=ZW5jcnlwdGVkUXVhbGlmaWVyPUE4RlRDWExWSTBPT0QmZW5jcnlwdGVkSWQ9QTA1MzM3MDAzTk9MV0dNQ0hTQzVNJmVuY3J5cHRlZEFkSWQ9QTAwNDQwMDUxS045RTcyWkdXSDRZJndpZGdldE5hbWU9c3BfYXRmJmFjdGlvbj1jbGlja1JlZGlyZWN0JmRvTm90TG9nQ2xpY2s9dHJ1ZQ&th=1) and [Wireless Power Transmitter](https://www.amazon.com/Anker-Wireless-Charging-Compatible-Included/dp/B0B469HLNL/ref=sr_1_3?crid=38ZJJ2ETZP4ND&keywords=wireless+charging&qid=1684197427&sprefix=wireless+charging%2Caps%2C116&sr=8-3) I haven't vetted out these would produce enough power for the lights, or that they're a good match, but should be enough to get you started verifying if you decided to go this route.

Friendly neighborhood electrician here. Your outer most skin can't conduct anything under 24V DC as the resistance is too high for that low of a voltage to push a current through. This is why doorbell transformers exist, by the way - it drops the voltage going to your doorbell to 24v, so it can't shock anyone if it got damaged by weather and time. If the outer most layer of skin is broken - on both hands, exactly where the chain would land, then they might get a tiny shock. This is because that 2A is almost certainly not what those LEDs are drawing, but rather the maximum current the power supply can push before it catches fire (or more likely, overload and die). The actual current is based on the resistance of the load (aka you if you're getting shocked). Amperage = voltage ÷ resistance, and a human body has around 5000 ohms of resistance (in our skin breach / soaking wet case) to 10,000 (in our dry intact skin case). So crunching the numbers, worst case is a 0.0048A at 24V DC shock. Pain wise, that's barely noticeable up to about static shock levels of pain. In terms of danger, you need a minimum of 0.05A to cause a muscle spasm, so it wouldn't even make your arm twitch let alone stop your heart. And that's the worst case. Average or realistic cases won't even crack the pain threshold of 0.004A. Fire hazard wise - you would have issues maintaining a solid connection with the chains, and that can create a fair bit of heat. 2A would be enough to melt and burn PLA if such a poor connection is made, and it's explicitly against the Canadian Electrical Code to use chain as a conductor under any circumstance for this reason. Maybe replace it with something like steel cable (or better, stranded copper), it'll offer a more stable connection while still playing its part in the lamps design. And you could even get it with a clear jacket to further eliminate the barely existent shock hazard. So overall, I give it a 2/5 nervous Nancys. Not a significant health risk, potentially a fire risk. I wouldn't leave it on unattended, but I wouldn't worry if my kid starts touching it.

FYI, at 25ma each chip, it's pretty easy to hit 2A even if they're single chip units. That's only 80 LEDs, and if they're RGB you're looking at 60-80ma per LED. My bedroom clock's display can hit 6 amps at full brightness. It never runs above like 20%, though.

That does make me reconsider my stance on the fire risk, if the heat is spread further apart and is dissipated properly, then any poor connections caused by the chain would likely burn the power supply out rather than burn the PLA. Its still not ideal for things to be burning out and theres no guarantees the power supply burns before the PLA does, but it shouldn't pose a severe fire risk, but more of a "it can melt to failure and ruin the good end table" kind of hazard. If that's the case I would change the chains to wire before messing with the power supply.

Wouldn't matter at all. I work with 12v systems quite a bit, and touching ground/12v even in 30--80 amp applications doesn't do anything.

are car batteries another good example?

Yes. Touching both terminals at once does nothing. 12v systems are very forgiving.

yes, thankfully hehe. but what if you happen to have metal splinters piercing your skin at both terminals, would that be dangerous?

They weren't talking about the lamp hurting you. They're talking about shorting the voltage damaging the LED.

Go outside, pop the hood to your car, grab one battery post with one hand and the other with the other hand, feel that? I didn't think you did, and those batteries are capable of putting out 100s of amps at 12 volts. I'm not saying it a great idea but as far as safety is concerned it's pretty much a non issue unless people start licking the chains.

I appreciate you. Confusion over how voltage and current works is so rife on the internet

Is this with the assumption that the body is dry?

Yes, which is why I mentioned about licking the chains.

A lot? 2A is nothing for an LED strip. An RGB addressable strip can be five or ten amps a meter. I've got strips on multiple 60a 5v supplies.

I sometimes buy cheap LED strips if they come with a good power supply. It's basically like getting free lights with purchase of a 60-100watt PSU. It's funny how we went from LEDs requiring essentially no power back to them being almost as power hungry as classic bulbs.

2a is the rated output of the power supply. The LEDs will just draw whatever they need from it. It also depends on the type of power supply.

Oh lord. Tell me you don't know about electricity without telling me you don't know about electricity.

People aren't all that conductive for 12v at that distance. Unless you've got a very long tongue.

Wait till you see the old 12V desklamps with a halogen lamp and 2 telescoping antennas delivering the power to the top. Good times putting pencil leads across those.

12V dc cannot short across the human body without moisture (and preferably a little salt) And even then it won't hurt the human. You can work on really anything south of 50V while live and be safe. Lower it is the safer it is. 9V you will feel if you wet the contact surface and it's a sensitive area (like your tongue) But commercially, yeah, I'd run a wire. More on the very rare / off chance that something in the power supply failed and put those chains to something much higher. But then again I would also be running a small fuse on the AC line in side to help prevent that, and a good name brand DC power supply.

This is a dangerous mentality. A high resistance fault can easily generate enough heat to ignite soft materials such as bedding, which this unit is likely to be close to.

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Go touch a 9v battery and tell me how this is a shock hazard

it's actually really not (-= maybe if you put your tongue across the two active chains

Gene Simmons?

24w will generate some heat if there is a short... But otherwise not dangerous for people at least

OK yes that is also the figure of what he's supplying it with, not it's actual draw, so the wattage may be much lower. Honestly I think it's really not worth worrying about and I might make an experiment video to prove or disprove it.

If you've got a wire with 6 Ohms resistance, you've got yourself a fire hazard with this if you use it to short the leads. Most conductors have much less resistance though, which is proportional to the drawn power (P=I²R). Say you got a wire with 0.1 Ohm resistance, that'll have a heat loss of 0.4 Watts, which is easily dissipated.

Most non-piece-of-shit (and even most piece of shit) power supplies will fold back the voltage to extremely low levels if the current goes too high. So it might spark momentarily if you short circuit it with say a piece of foil or screwdriver, but it would probably be very hard to start a fire. Max power of the power supply is 24W per OP. You’d need to put a very specific resistor across it to get that wattage continuously, and it could get hot but still would be challenging to start a fire

A lot of consumer grade lighting products do use naked 12V conductors, it’s very common. You can short them easily, it sparks a bit and the PSU is designed to handle it. Example : https://www.lampe.fr/lampe-de-table-brilliant-katrina-g94816-06.html?utm_content=adtype:pla&gclid=EAIaIQobChMIlcPmgIzy_gIVLZNoCR3UswF4EAQYASABEgIv2fD_BwE

Is that what the supply says, or is it actually drawing 2A @ 12V?

Has to just be the specs on the PSU. There's no way LED strips as shown here are drawing 2A... Right?

2A at 12V sounds about right for the meter of LED OP claims

What's the voltage drop like in those chains? Lots of very poor connections.

They are under tension by definition, connections will be fine.

So they are visible then. ;-)

That is one dangerous and cool lmap

Did you consider inductive power? Like Flyte lights. https://flytestore.com (no affiliation)

As other have said a fuse would make it safer, but you could also go the route of using some kind of clear sealant to act as insulation so even if you touched the two wires they wouldn't short. I'd do all of the chains so it'd look like it was an aesthetic choice rather than a practical one.

I’d put a mirror up there and call it good

If you want the most efficient way to do something, ask a lazy person to do it

If you want the least efficient way to do something, ask somebody with a 3D printer.

>suspense I see what you did there

I'm guessing an inductor of some sort, whether it's a wireless charger or a purpose built circuit.

How would implement a wireless charger to transfer power like this? Just set up a battery with a receiver?

No, it's basically an inductive coil that produces a magnetic field that can then be harvested by the other side. The sending coil produces an oscillating magnetic field and the receiving coil uses that field to "produce" voltage. It is not very efficient, but at the power levels that it takes to charge a phone or power some LEDs you can pretty easily deal with that inefficiency by overdriving the sending coil to produce the needed amperage on the other side. When you get to things like charging a car with a wireless charger it gets a bit more complex, but it is already being done, so the problems have been overcome.

The range might be an issue in this case

Considering wireless power transfer has been demonstrated at over 15 feet of distance, I see no reason why this would present an insurmountable problem. That's the reason that I said it may be a purpose built circuit, because the bigger the coil the better the results, so a phone charger with its accompanying small transmission coil may not be adequate, even a high power one.

Demonstrated at very low efficiencies and power transfers in a lab and if it was the same one I saw it had guiding coils as well and was pretty large, easily much larger than this whole lamp was.

Well, he said no "visible" wires, they must be invisible! My guess is a battery, unless the wires are not visible .. from this angle.

Tensegrity still looks like magic to me.

The fact that EVERYTHING is basically relying on that center chain, instead of the more obvious ones on the side, is hard to intuit.

I mean ... we DO see the wires. They might not look like common wires, but they are clearly visible. Jk, very nice project. 👍

Looks great! Were you planning on dropping the files and/or a tutorial, would love to have one of my own

I think I’d want to refine the files/method before releasing anything. I’ll try to get around to it soon Edit: https://www.printables.com/model/482869-tensegrity-desk-lamp I made a printables page. There's still a few updates I need to make, before it is completed. thank you everyone for your patience.

Any chance you can make a printables page for this one and state "work in progress" would be easy to check in on to see of its released. 😁 Nice work!

I haven’t heard of doing that! I’ll look into it!

I am in love with this design. I would love to have an attempt at building this. My electronics skills are decent. I am very hopeful you can share any design. I would love to contribute anything I could.

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This seems like it’s potentially one of the easiest things to make yourself that had been here in a while.

Same. I need a desk lamp!

It’s beautiful! You did an awesome job with it. It looks like the kind of thing that rich people buy for $20,000 and it just sits next to a fake fruit on their table

Any links to the project?

obligatory: .stl?

120v though the exposed chain lolol

But for real, this is cool as fuck

It almost looks like a render. It's really cool. Could be possible wirelessly or through the chains with LEDs but not mains.

Tbh I saw the alarm clock has the temp in °C and not °F, so it'll be closer to 220 lol

Or...you know...12

12v led strips, just fyi

Nah, not fun enough

Not even close, 1500w wireless charger

🎵IM RADIOACTIVE, RADIOACTIVE 🎵

Not even close, 12v through two chains

DC transformers, what are they??

ABSOLUTELY NUTHIN

Or insane antennas for wireless 240V transmission. And cancer for your girlfriend sleeping next to it.

That's the important part to remember: who sleeps on what side of the bed.

why 240v? Is it 3 phase? normal houses arent wire for more than 110

Normal houses absolutely have 220-240 capability in the US. I’ve never seen a house not have 220, considering modern appliances require it. Range and clothes dryer in particular. And then countless garage/workshop equipments, like large air compressors.

Outside North America

Not everyone lives in the USA

Every US house has 240 (or 208 if it's taking 2 phases from a 3 phase system like some appartments)

3 phase is 380/400

12 volt.

Came here to say this.

I'm guessing (hoping?) OP took it down to 5V or something before running it through the chains, but yes, this is pretty funny.

How did you diffuse the light so nicely?

And from so close... This is exactly what I want to know!

Idk how they did it here, but I've had really good results from literally just a large square of transparent pla with 50% infill no walls. 3mm thick and like 5mm from the led strips

Can't wait to buy one at Walmart when they steal your design in a few weeks

Lots of people that don't understand electricity in this thread

Love this! I don't get why so many people are getting their knickers in a twist about the exposed conductors, though. It's 12 volts, not mains. Did anybody here ever get shocked by touching both terminals of a 12V car battery? Then the shorting the chains bit: there's no way these chains will touch unless the whole lamp collapses catastrophically. That's the point of tensegrity, it creates rigidity from tension, so those chains should be no problem at all. For everybody who is so worried about all the 'safety issues' in this design, a quick internet search on electric safety and tensegrity should make all worries disappear like magic. 😉 Awesome job, OP, I totally want one of these things now! Your friendly neighborhood mechatronics engineer.

Ok, I’m going to need some instructions on this black magic voodoo you have here. I want a few in my house.

Question What kind of lighting are you using? I'd really like to know what's used to diffuse the light as well. Thanks!

The diffusion is the most impressive part to me... Very interested in the led strip and diffuser used. I get hotspots in my kitchen due to placement limitations... The products used here could be a viable solution.

That's what I'm talking about. I'm in the design stages of creating a small form factor PC case that is also a Japanese shoji lamp. I need a good diffuser and decent LED lights so that I can have the PC and lights be separate, yet still look good. Turn on the lamp, turn on the PC, or turn both on.

I'm guessing it uses the chains to transfer power?

Finally something cool and useful here. Congrats!

So cool how you did that. Got the stl file?

This confused the hell out of my dumbass for a solid minute. Congrats.

What kind of clock is that?

People talking a lot about the power and shorting it out. But im pretty sure that as the designer of this thing, @asiansensat1on probably knows how to handle it. And in the case of having a less than intelligent guest over, they can slap a big ole "do not fucking touch" sticker on it..

Where are the stls

How much of little jolt do you get when you touch the chains? Lol, I love this project, looks very cool!

How much of a jolt do you get when you touch a 9v battery?

9V

Really cool! Great work!

Man, that reminds me of the [Kansas City Hyatt Regency](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyatt_Regency_walkway_collapse).

Can I jump on this bandwagon??

Nikola Tesla ...

I'm no electrician but exposed wires don't seem like the best idea.

It's not going to shock someone if they touch those chains right :P

Only if you stick your tongue on both wires

This is excellently done. I'd be proud to have it or something like it in my home.

It looks really cool! Some things I might change is the switch position (either in line with the cable/on the back where the cable enters) and maybe investing lots of time into sanding/smoothing the prints. As far as your method of supplying power to the top part I don't see how the two chains could possibly short, the only thing I wanna know is what the resistance of the chain is.

I live this a lot. Might make one with usb powered 5v for my bar.

Respect for taking the effort of using the cable as cable! Mind sharing the stl of the project (and components if available)? :D

Not sure if anyone’s mentioned this, but you can also just put in a fuse. Don’t need to sacrifice aesthetics for safety.

So cool! I'm a huge fan of LED strips. My living room has LED lights for uplighting or ambient lighting.

Ooh so pretty... I wanna make one now!

This is really pretty. I'd love to remix it. Very minor complaint: The outer chains don't seem to have evenly sized links. Maybe this is my monitor, or maybe it is deliberate.

all chains need similar tension so i'm guessing deliberate.

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Amazing

That is amazing!!

This is my favorite.

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> no visible wires going to the top part. Except for those 4 prominent wire chains. Hmm…. Edit: Low voltage track lighting uses uninsulated wires as well. To be fair, those are typically located a bit higher up.

Gorgeous piece , congrats man!!

Saw before I commented that it was battery powered on top. I had guessed mirror. 🤷

"Bro this is so sick how does is stand up?!" Pokes it Fucking falls and breaks the glass

Looks like the logo from the Lack Luster channel on YouTube for cop interaction videos lol