Taig Spindle LED Light

**fretsman** · 06-21-2008, 11:15 AM

Ok, thought I'd share this as it's very useful if the lighting around your machine may be "shadowy" like mine. I tore apart an outdoor LED low voltage lighting lamp ($3.05 on clearance at Lowes!) that has 6 superbright LEDs.

In the first pic you can see the roll of tape and how many shadows are on the inside and this gets even worse when you get the headstock down low with a cutter inside and you're trying to move in on a pocket or a similar situation.

I've seen the LED rings that others made for their X3 mills and thought that would be perfect for me but I'd have to come up with a different mounting idea as there's no room under the headstock for something like this. So a sort of "collar" would have to do. It's made from black acetal 375 thick and the pocket depth on mine is .250 but needless to say, feel free to modify it any way you'd like.

Sorry I didn't get any pics of the inside of the housing inside but when you see the dxf for it, you'll get the jist of the pocketing for the wires. As for led hole locations, those are totally up to you and the cover cap can be made using the same outside profile as the base. For the wiring, I used a 12 volt wall wart transfomer that is plugged into my main outlet center and turns on when I power everything up. You could add a inline rotary switch if you desire though.

Just thought I'd pass this along as it's a quick project that really helps out, just don't make these up and sell them on ebay- lol!!!

**fretsman** · 06-21-2008, 11:17 AM

More pics including a pic of the tape with just the spindle light (no shadows!!). Also forgot to mention, I attached this with a screw into the T-slot in the headstock.