Ikea JANSJÖ nichia 119 mod

I found an led lamp at Ikea that I liked with a nice long flexible neck and a nice heavy base, but when I got it home I found the colour temperature was a little warm for me and it had a yellowish tint. I think it would be fine for some applications, but it didn’t match any other lighting in the room or my other desk lamp so it was going to bother me until I changed it. Sorry I didn’t take many pictures as I went, but it should still be enough to show you what I did.

Finished mod with beam shot.

Here’s the original “star”. It’s just a small fibreglass pcb with some 7135’s. There isn’t a very good thermal path from the led to the body of the lamp. As you’ve probably realized by now, you could run this directly off a lithium cell. It could make an interesting work light.

I had some Nichia 119’s from fasttech https://www.fasttech.com/p/1325116 , but fasttech didn’t have any stars that fit so I had to use a general purpose star with a slight modification https://www.fasttech.com/p/1133804 I sliced a V groove through the center pad to separate it in two, for the positive and negative terminals of the nichia 119. I used some solder paste and a hotplate to reflow the led, some wire and some 7135’s to the star. It’s not pretty but it does the job. You can’t solder the wires to the proper pads, or they’ll get in the way of the reflector

The new star.

Underneath. The original star had enough thermal paste, so I didn’t add any.

The 7135’s get in the way of the reflector so you have to file or melt part of it away. The new star is also thicker so you must shave the bottom of the reflector down, or the lens and lens retainer will stick out and leak light out the sides, which looks a little ugly.

Reflector mounted in place. The reflector holds the star down and is screwed to the metal body of the head of the lamp. As you can see, the dome on the led is not centred over the die, but it doesn’t affect the beam here.

The lens is held in place by the retainer which clips onto the reflector. You have to pry the retainer out to take the head apart in the first place.

I find the nichia to be a much nicer tint and the light is pretty much perfect for getting light exactly where you need it for soldering or detail work.

Nice mod alexvh. Some good creative juices flowing in that brain of yours. Really like your idea to mod that 1w/3w type emitter base for the Nichia 119. I definitely will be copying that one. Thanks for sharing :)

Nice mod, now that I know the internals of that lamp, I may pick up one myself to make a nice workplace illumination. BTW, I'm pleasantly surprised that IKEA uses a Rebel led in this lamp, the tint can not have been that horrible? But probably the tint was too warm..

I have used the same lamp on my workbench for about a year now and I would'nt change anything about it and certainly not the tint which impressed me much for such a cheap lamp.

I just measured the tint to 3250 K and lying on the black body curve with a negligible offset.

I don't know anything about the production spread. It can be a lucky ex.

Nice mod and cool light, I think it’s especially cool how it uses 7135’s like that. What does it do about AC/DC conversion? What kind of buck converter is it using?

Having said that Rebel’s are great emitter’s and have a better thermal path that N119’s do. For anyone else considering this mod you may want to try to source a rebel in the tint of your preference and just do a quick reflow. They also have a wider selection of color’s than ANY other type of LED out there.

See http://www.luxeonstar.com/ for a full selection (literally ANY color or tint you can think of). Some of the exceptional ones are in the Rebel PC line including Lime, Red-orange, deep red, cyan and blue, plus many more colors and a full line of white tint options.

How about adding two more 7135 chips? Since the Rebel has good thermal sinking adding some additional current would raise output.

Thanks guys. The tint was not really horrible, but the room is lit by overhead fluorescent bulbs, and I think they may be cool white. So while I’m in that room, my eyes are adjusted to that colour temperature and the rebel looked too warm and yellow in comparison. I think in most cases you will be happy with the stock led, they certainly looked fine in the showroom.

Cereal_killer, here is the power adaptor for the lamp


The wire is removable, presumably so they can manufacture one lamp for all regions and just have a few different adaptors. The adaptor just supplies 4V to the lamp and the 7135’s regulate the current. Also, I meant the thermal path from the led to the metal head of the lamp.

The stock star is just a fibreglass pcb. There are some vias to carry the heat down to the copper on the other side. Then the heat conducts sideways through the copper plane to the head of the lamp. It might be ok, I’m not sure. Just keep in mind it is not a metal star.

Nice mod, thanks for sharing the info.
I have seen this lamp by my neighbors and it is definetly a very nice gooseneck spotlight, very useful and tint was nice and warm in my eyes. I asked but they couldn’t remember the name but now you took care of that lack and also added infos about the internals…well done!

They are rated 3W and 70/75lm
Also available as a 10lm usb variant
IKEA site

I’ve looked it up on the Ikea site, it says 2700k, so yes, kinda warm. I have another lamp from Ikea and it has also a very warm led bulb.

Damn!! I nearly bought something from Ikea. :open_mouth:

That’s where I went right.

£10 for the light and £9 for postage, 50 miles away from store. That’s how close I was then I pulled back from the brink.

I have two of them, I bought them some 4 years ago for modding, bit I didn’t even open them, and I’m happy with them as they are. Mine have different connectors, RCA to be exact

Just bought a second one of these from a local thrift store for a buck .I was pretty excited to see it since the first one burnt up the wall wart /power supply and I hadn't replaced it yet . In the package I thought it was a usb connector but it's that odd two pin that plugs into their transformer so now I need to cut and slice into the line of another wall wort .4volts is like impossible to find and i'm guessing 5 volts won't bother it too much .I guess we'll see . The original light was a very nice warm white and a Fenix traffic wand fit nicely on the head .I goosenecked it over another lamps shade and the amount of light and the tint made it a wonderful watch tv light or enough light to navigate the room without blowing out your retina at night. google led me back to a BLF thread i'd missed .Glad to find out what the led is because it's been on a short list of tints I really like for years .

WTG Ikea

http://rainydaymagazine.com/wp/2011/10/17/ikea-jansjo-led-lamp/ An interesting teardown of these lights

Got one of these too ... paid $2 I think (Mr. Big Spender) :)

very nice mod

I do like the mod and I have another question - Does anyone know where I can find the unique plug that works with that powersupply (1 flat pin and 1 round pin)?

I have a dog that chomped into one of the cords by the plug (luckily it was not 110V!).