The Japandi Pendant Lamps started with a furniture shop and a price that was hard to justify. Raphaela had found a pair of ribbed globe pendants she liked: the shape was right, the Japandi aesthetic worked, and the surface had the deliberate look of a 3D print. The shades were injection-molded plastic styled to resemble FDM, priced as though that were a virtue. We decided to print the real thing.
We designed the shades in Houdini using a parametric subnetwork built around a revolved profile. Ramp curves control the silhouette at every height along that profile. A second set of ramps defines the thickness and shape of each groove, which is boolean subtracted from the main form. Adjusting the shape takes seconds rather than editing a sketch and re-running a feature tree, which is why we abandoned Fusion 360 early. For printing, we chose vase mode on a Prusa MK3S with a 1 mm nozzle: a continuous spiral with no layer seams, and a bead wide enough to leave clearly visible layer lines on the finished surface.
The shallowest overhang sections at the widest part of each shade caused layer separation on the first prints. The gradual curve was too shallow for vase mode to bridge cleanly at normal speed. Adjusting the silhouette profile reduced the problem at the worst angles, and lowering the print speed at those heights resolved it. Switching to Prusament opaque white for the final run helped too: it bonds more reliably than the Anycubic white we used in early tests, and the opacity means minor surface variation disappears once the lamp is lit.
The first design, printed to the full build volume of the MK3S, became two shades for the living room. With the Houdini toolkit already in place, Raphaela shaped a second design: rounder, 18 cm, fuller around the equator. We printed three for above the dining table. Both sets diffuse light more evenly than the store original, the opaque filament turning each groove into a fine shadow line as the light shifts. The full story behind the node graph and the printing decisions is in the making-of article.
