Lab window · not a service desk

We make parametric forms in Xiamen.

Lamps are the main shelf. Objects, wall plates, and table forms sit beside them. Every edition starts as a definition. This site opens print-tested files to individuals. The farm, the bath, and the families are here so you can see how a file earns its place.

Meet the designers and the team. Read the methods. Members slice in the Studio.

01 — Form

A family before a file

We start with a surface, not a SKU. Minimal surfaces, sine displacements, and biomimetic shells sit in Grasshopper as families, not one-offs. A single definition can yield a 140 mm pendant and a 200 mm table shade by changing radius, period, and wall offset.

We keep the math visible: you will see the same undulation language across a month’s drop. A lamp, an object, and a wall plate can share one family. The point is not novelty for its own sake. It is a form that still reads when the layer lines show. Printsurf opens those families as print-tested editions. The finished-goods path stays on minsurf.com. Here you get the file, the notes, and the constraints we already solved.

02 — Make it printable

Wall, parts, light

A beautiful mesh is not a printable lamp. We set wall thickness for a 0.4 nozzle, split large shades into stacked rings or a cap-plus-body, and decide where supports may touch. Light has to pass. Too thick and the shade goes dead; too thin and the wall gaps.

We mark seam, brim, and orientation in the 3MF. If a clip or ring is still immature, it stays on the free shelf, not in a paid drop. The goal is a file a home FDM owner can finish in one weekend, with notes we would give our own farm.

03 — Test

The bath, then a finished lamp

We do not photograph lamp-holders. We test outflow and structure. Shades go into a water bath so we can see how a thin wall takes load and how light would move through the same section. We hang, we stack, we press. Failures stay in the lab.

What we publish has already sat under a finished lamp we ran out of the farm. That is why the site says print-tested, not just printable. You are not buying a raw experiment. You are buying a form that already lived as light. Why we test lamps in water.

04 — Farm

Small batch, then the 3MF

The farm is small. A few printers, a materials shelf, and a habit of slicing the same file three ways before we call it a drop. We print PLA when the form is gentle and PETG when the wall needs spring. Each paid edition ships as a pre-sliced 3MF plus a raw mesh.

Layer-height ticks and nozzle notes sit on the card. We do not run 150 SKUs. We run a monthly shelf. If you need a crate of finished lamps, that is a different door — the fence is below.