Yes, noise is a problem, which unfortunately makes the lamp quite unpopular with my girlfriend ;-) Some is indeed coming from the folding mechanism itself, but the majority of noise is actually caused by the stepper motor, despite limiting the current to the necessary minimum. One could try to switch to a more advanced (i.e. silent) stepper motor driver than the A4988 (I mainly picked that one because ESPHome already has a driver for it), or use a servo motor instead.