LED's Light Up Work

[GeorgeRace]

I guess I must be getting old, it seems like I need a lot more light for everything that I do. I have always had trouble setting my zero point on my work. I make a small dot on the metal, and then center and zero the mill over the mark. Probably a lot of other ways to do it, but it works for me.

I have a dust collector attachment for my mill, that really helps to keep the shop clean. But when I use it, it is even harder to see what I am doing. So most of the time I don't use it. I have found a solution.

Harbor Freight has these 9 LED flashlights that come in 2 packs for $2.99 most of the time. Here is how I turned my $6 investment into a really nice work light.

There is a set of pictures that I am attaching that show the steps I took.

First I cut off the head of the flashlights, just below the knurled area. Inside is a small spring on the positive terminal. I removed the spring with a small pencil soldering iron. I then soldered a short length of shielded cable to the printed circuit board. Center conductor where the spring was, and the shield/ground wire to the other common terminal.

I milled four openings in the bottom of my dust collector plate just the right size for a tight fit. I drilled 4 holes for the cables to go through. I then used Gorilla Glue to hold the tight fitting light in place.

The total LED assembly draws about .5 amps. I used a dropping resistor to limit the current from my +37 Volt Controller Power Supply. In my case it was a 50 ohms, 25 watt dog bone type resistor. I mounted it at the front of my power supply fan. Fresh air blows across it when it is turned on, keeping it cool. You can't see it in the pictures, I used a 2 pin Cinch Jones plug up near the top of the router so I could remove the dust collector by unplugging the lighting circuit.

It really lights up the work area with very intense light. The pictures make it look like there are 4 very bright spots, and there is, but there is also a lot of diffused light all over the work piece as well.

I am really pleased with the end result. All for about $6 bucks and a couple of hours of relaxing work time.

George

[D O N]

Nice work George.

Please note that your difficulty in seeing is not due to age. I have concluded that the world is in fact getting darker and fuzzier.

Don

[br1]

Very nice idea.