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Two years, and a wide variety of knowledge and technology went into making the Firefly Lamp. A year later we were back at it: catching, pinning and scanning.
First, Harry caught and preserved the bug. Then it was pinned and dried in the exact form it would take as a lamp. The next step was to scan the Firefly, so we used an x-ray imaging facility (mainly used for medical testing) to capture a detailed image of the bug.
Unfortunately, we lost a year in the development process because the first Firefly was destroyed in the scanning process. By the time we learned that the tiny, frail Firefly needed a coat of gold before scanning, the season to catch Fireflies was over.
Once the three-dimensional scanning process was a success, we were able to scale the information and print it out as a SLA – a rapid prototyping process commonly used in the design industry. After some minor finishing work, the firefly SLA is lit using three tiny LED lamps.
The lamp has been through many iterations, but now it is finalized. In 2019 Harry was honored as Designer of the Year at BoomSP Design in Brazil and a roomful of Fireflies took center stage.
We hope to be able to offer the Firefly Lamp for sale very soon.