Laser Cutting Replacement Parts For Ikea Sjöpenna Lamp

Laser cutting is a great way to breathe new life into a perfectly good item that just needs a little help 🙂 This Ikea Sjöpenna oval lamp is pretty sweet and puts out a nice diffuse light, however it is held together by rubber bands which make it really fast to put together but also give it a short lifespan at which point it falls into a mushy pile.

actually it looks kind of cool on the floor like ???? ??? ???? ???? ?? ??????? ????? 🙂

But all we need are some clippy things to hold this elegant design together! BY THE POWER OF GREYLASER! (file as dwg, dxf, ai, pdf and eps)

For the oval Sjöpenna lamp there appear to be two different lengths needed (there are other sizes of lamps but this is the one we have, if you need other lengths for another model just shoot us an email), this wasn’t a big deal with the rubber bands but now that the clips are fixed sizes we need two different shapes. I also added a bit of a curve to the back to make them wider in the middle and therefore like a beam they get stronger with that added depth. I tried three thicknesses of PETG plastic, the .02″ which tended to bend too often when I was hooking it into position and couldn’t keep a tight fit, the .06″ which was too rigid and snapped too often, but the .04″ really Goldilocksed right in there (yes I verbed it, you heard it here first).

First I would recommend you remove all the masking that protected the pieces from scorching because your cutting bed is filthy (of course it is, who are all these people with immaculate aluminum honeycomb beds?). At this point you can paint the PETG to make the seams more pronounced but I thought it seems plenty noticeable even with the clips being clear.

To get the clips on there takes some practice as they needed to be tight to keep this thing from getting mushy, so I hook one end around the tabs first. I put green tape on the clip so you can see what is going on hopefully.

Then I curve the hook at the opposite end around and get ready to poke it around the tabs at the other end. The .04″ PETG can take some bending so you can be a little aggressive. There are a few extra pieces in the file in case you break a few pieces as well.

Now hook that little corner around the tabs!

Once you have the point around the tabs you can just push the clip to get it around the rest of the way and it should just click into position in a very satisfying way 🙂