Bringing a Product to Market with Matty of Unnecessary Inventions

Making just one of something is a major challenge in its own right. But manufacturing multiple units of that same thing to sell — even in relatively small quantities — is a whole other level of difficulty. As just one example, consider what goes into 3D printing one part compared to injection molding a thousand parts. There is a reason that so many of us in the maker community stick to prototypes and simply release them as open-source designs. But Matty Benedetto of Unnecessary Inventions wanted to actually bring a lamp to market and he documented the process.

This lamp, dubbed “The Loading Lamp” because its LED effects resemble Apple’s old rainbow loading wheel, was for sale on Matty’s website for $200 — though it was a limited production run that is now sold out. The important point is that Matty needed to design The Loading Lamp in such a way that he could manufacture and assemble several units without turning his workshop into a factory and dedicating his life to the lamp making business. His video explains how he went from an idea to an initial prototype and then to a real product suitable for an online shop.

The Loading Lamp concept is purposefully simple. It is just a circular mirror that mounts onto the wall, with LEDs hidden behind to shine light outwards onto the wall. Animated rainbow effects make it pleasing to the eye. Matty built the initial prototype with a 3D-printed frame, laser-cut mirror acrylic, and a strip of Govee LEDs with their included controller. That looked pretty good, but the fit and finish wasn’t what your typical retail shopper would expect.

So, Matty moved on to a more professional and manufacturable design. That has a hefty CNC-milled aluminum frame, a real glass mirror, and a custom LED solution. That solution consists of the Matty32 LED controller board (based on an ESP32) and a bunch of WS2812b individually addressed RGB LEDs on a custom ring-shaped PCB. Even that design required a couple of iterations, as the original aluminum frame was much too heavy and Matty had to revise it to eliminate a lot of the superfluous material.

The Loading Lamp’s complete BOM is very modest, but even that would have been hard for Matty to manufacture himself. So, he had JLCPCB and JLCCNC make the parts. However, thanks to the well-considered design, assembly was straightforward and Matty was able to put together the limited run of lamps to sell.