FrånkenLämp Part II

When we last saw this project, everything was disassembled. Now we are going to put FrånkenLämp together.

The metal stalks from TIVED have a slightly larger diameter than the holes in the perforated plate of STRANNE. This required careful drilling of the holes to avoid damaging the densely packed wires. Once the holes were large enough, the three metal stalks were inserted. 

Tie wraps were used to hold the three metal stalks in place. One was snaked around them in the space between the two perforated plates. This was tightened, pulling them together. A second was used just below the bottom perforated plate, holding the ends together and locking them in place. You can see the cut ends of the two tie wraps in the picture above.


Since the ends of the metal stalks extend further, a large hole was drilled in the white plastic cover. This is what it looks like with the modified cover back in place. I didn't quite get the hole centered, luckily it was big enough that everything still fit.


Here you can see what the combined bundle of lights looks like. I was very pleased with how things were coming together.








Now, I just needed to power the thing. Since there were two different types of LED bulbs, each requiring a different voltage, I used both power supplies that came with the two lamps. At this point, I made some modifications that weren't completely necessary. I could have mounted a short power strip inside the lamp or had two separate wires coming out of the base to be plugged in. However, I wanted everything controlled by a single switch, and I didn't want any internal electrical connections that could come loose when the lamp was moved.

So, I opened up each of the power supplies and made soldered connections. This is the first one taken apart.   On the right half of the case are the two contacts that attach to the prongs of the plug hidden beneath. The connector at the bottom center is the DC supply for the LEDs.

 This is what it looked like after I soldered permanent connections to the circuit board. The two tie wraps serve as a strain relief, since they are too large to fit through the hole in the plastic case. This prevents damage to the soldered connections if the wires are pulled.

I did the same thing to the second lamp's power supply, and closed them up with some Gorailla Tape (think Duct Tape, but better) and super glue. I wired the three LED bulbs from the TIVED back together in series and covered everything with more heat-shrink tubing. Below you can see the two power supplies, one for each type of bulb. 

This is the layout of how I mounted things inside the lamp. You can see that there is plenty of room for everything. At the bottom of the picture, you can see the switch built in to the power cord. With the original Ikea design, this would only see low voltage DC power. However, it is clearly marked that it is rated for 120 volts AC and (if I remember correctly) three amps. This is more than sufficient to power both lamps.

A quick test shows everything in working order and a good amount of light.

With everything working, I used some double-sided foam tape to mount the two power supplies inside the lamp.

Then I attached the base... and tried it out for real.

I am extremely happy with the final results. It has the nice soft area lighting from the STRANNE combined with an abundance of usable light from the TIVED. It seems rather perfect, and it is the only one of its kind.