Thread: Lathe LED light

After being sick of getting burnt off the halogen light, I made up a light a few weeks back and thought someone might be interested.

I made a couple of bases out of steel and just welded them together from the inside to give a neat look. They are basically copied off the commercial available ones.It has the cotter pin design to stop it swinging freely just like them as well

The arms are just aluminium square tube I had laying around, and the end fittings I made up and welded together to suit with a hole down the centre for the wires.

All the joints are friction with spring washers used to help out, and I put a switch in the base to turn it on and off.

The light my son gave to me and it's a LED multi voltage DC work light, I think I remember him saying it was 900 lumimum's, but would have to check with him latter on about that. The voltage can range from around 9v to 90v and only needs around 0.5 of a amp to run it. The best thing over the halogen is this one only gets just warm, not hot.






















Dave

I take two, great lamp.



Regards,



Frank.

Thanks Frank, I was just about to post a picture of the old one. It's going on the mill and being converted over to LED along with the other one that is already on it.
I find the nice white light to be much better than the yellowy colour from the halogen ones.



Dave

Hi Dave,

Nice professional looking job, looks better than a bought one, brilliant work (pun intended)

Regards
Ray

Thats some nice work Dave!

For those with not so good eyes, you can also get led lit magnifying glass lamp thingies on an arm- not tried one but could be good. LED 5 Inch Magnifying Lamp 5 Diopter Magnifier light | eBay This ones a bit small but i'm sure you get my drift.

I have a few of the older style desk lamps, i think one can be seen in the show us your shed thread, on my bench. They are only about $20 from Bunnings, currently i use them with 18 or 22w CFL's, (cool white) so i cannot burn myself. they also come with a clamp base so they can be pit pretty well anywhere. The downside is of course at certain speeds things appear to be going backwards. I am a bit of an LED buff but the good technology is still pretty expensive, although it is coming down in price. I believe bunnings are replacing a large section of there cfl range with the osram LED's which should bring the price down.

The lamp on the HM50 is pretty useless, i always find myself straining to see with it. Another thing on the to do list....

Ewan

HI,
WOW Dave thats a great Job the Lamp looks really Good .

The LED's are expensive, my son said that one costs $150, not cheap but when you look at the life span and the prices of the Halogen globe (around $15 each) and the much better light, it's well worth it in the long run.

Dave

I forgot to say, ebay has some good prices on LED lights like mine, some are around half that price.

Dave

I bought some LED video lights from Amazon
Amazon.com: NEEWER® 160 LED CN-160 Dimmable Ultra High Power Panel Digital Camera / Camcorder Video Light, LED Light for Canon, Nikon, Pentax, Panasonic,SONY, Samsung and Olympus Digital SLR Cameras: Camera & Photo
which I'm using on the mill. According to the box 2080 lumen
The are most excellent!
One day when I want a long milling job I'll machine up some Al housings for them to replace the plastic.

Michael

Hi Dave,
How am I going to copy it without some better pictures of the joints(mostly how the wire gets through)

Great job.

This is the guy I bought my LED lights from jagtradingonline (there maybe cheaper, havent looked for a long time)

Stuart

Fantastic, Dave. Looks like a machine light, unlike my cast-off desk lamp.

Once again another piece of art! Looks great.

I'm also laughing to myself because I have the very same (or similar) light on the back of my 4x4 to light up the campsite. Puts out a brilliant white light, can leave it on all night and uses bugger all juice from my second battery. I'm laughing because I know how bright it is, it must turn night into day over your lathe!

They are a bit expensive, I bought mine on ebay (where else) about 2 years ago but a quick search of LED Worklight shows them for about $60. Not sure if they are the same quality though.

How did you make the base?

Cheers,

Simon

Your lights are brilliant Dave (pun intended), and it has had me wondering for some time why manufacturers have persisted with Q/H technology when we have had affordable leds for some time now. It wouldn't be too hard to adapt some of the cheaper head torches for machine lighting. The issues of hot lamps, high voltages and fragile globes would be behind us, and at an acceptable cost I would think. Even some of the led torches could be the basis of a good machine lamp, the LED Lenser 7 torches have very bright light, and a zoom lens which can move from a tightly focused beam to a wide beam which could be quite useful. Lights operating on D.C. would not have strobe effects as A.C. powered lights can, so situations where spinning cutters which appear stationary would not present (although if lights were dimmed by varying the lights duty cycle, this danger would reappear). We could reduce the led current, but the colour would likely change too, or we could use neutral density filters, or even an iris diaphragm, like on old camera lenses to reduce light output.
Anyway Dave, congratulations on yet another well thought out and well executed project,
Rob.

Hi Dave,
Nice job on the light, you will enjoy the difference in heat output of the LED's make. Your design is very similar to the pair of lights I made for my mill. I found that Deal Extreme have a great variety at good prices for LED's.
I have just changed over all my house down lights to LED's. One question, why did you use a spring washer? I find the nylock nuts supply sufficient clamping. With the addition of the spring washer your nylock nuts are not working fully, they need one and a half threads past the end of the nut.
Regards Bob

Hi Simon, Stuart,
Here are a few more photos I took tonight. I do have some when I was cutting the triangles but cant find that memory card at the moment.

The base is made of 6 pieces, the base which is a piece of 10mm from memory, the 6 triangle pieces and the top cap. I just tacked them up from the inside which was a bit of a mission with the 350 amp mig gun nozzle LOL, then used the die grinder to knock the weld down a bit.



For the wires to get though I drilled 10mm hole which allows enough room for the wires to get past the 6mm bolt.
This piece below was made out of 3 pieces and the 2 squares where machined and drill before cutting the angles on them. The wire only needed to be light because the LED doesn't draw much power.









Dave

Edit
The reason the second swivel has a bend in it, is so the holed drilled for the wire faces down the tube. If it doesn't have the bend the wire will snag the tube if you move it, and you will also be able to see the wire. The base one is fine as it's strait up and in alignment.
Depending on where it's to be mounted, just change the angles to suit where it's going to be used.