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Mid-century Dazor Lamp Repair

4/5/2022

I received a brilliant antique lamp as a gift. It's a floor lamp built by Underwriter's Laboratories/Dazor Mfg Corp, around 60 years ago. I cleaned it up a little bit, and put it in the corner of my living room. When I turned it on, sparks shot out of it.

Not ready to throw the whole thing out, I decided to try fixing it. It was clear that the lamp's socket was shorting, causing its interior to burn. For some reason, the socket was lined with cardboard, which definitely didn't help. Regardless, the rest of the lamp was fine. Replacing that single component would fix the lamp. Unfortunately, the lamp was so old that no modern sockets would fit. I found one that was close, but its plastic housing was still way too tall.

I disassembled the new socket to figure out why it was so tall. The inner components would still definitely fit, but the housing was too tall. There was a bunch of wasted space inside the housing. There was also another issue; The replacement would need to screw into an oddly sized threaded rod inside of the lamp, which I couldn't find a match for.

I measured the threads of the old socket, as well as the then I designed a new upper housing in Rhino, matching the size. The result was converted to a mesh, and 3D Printed in PLA on an Ender 3.

The newly assembled replacement was still slightly taller than the old one, but it didn't interfere with anything, and the threads matched up perfectly. The whole assembly went back into the lamp's bell shade, and the whole thing was rewired.

And now my dimly lit reading corner is a little bit brighter!