Just finished this one. The CFL in my garage/ shop is pretty useless in cold weather and doesn't light at all below freezing. Had to do something about that
CPU heatsink from a scrapped Mac G3 or G4. Pulled off the fins to fit the base of a blown CFL and then milled the base flat.
rough band sawed a lump of alu to fit inside the CFL base
drilled and tapped to fit a stub arbor
turned down
all fits together!
250mA driver from Buyincoins (cost a dollar or so)
All wired up and working - LED is a 12V XM-L easywhite (essentially 4 3V XPE LEDs in series), supposedly warm white (2700K) but it seems cooler, more like the the 4000K of the others. I'll have to ask my friend who gave it to me if he can remember.
some comparison shots. Camera was on automatic, so the CFL is relatively brighter than it appears in reality
18W CFL, 4C temp
plain LED
with 60deg optic
with 60deg optic and light bar on
next up is a lightbar for the right side, over the drill press
sorry, tried a short cut that wasn't very short or very successful :) They should be up properly now. I'll be adding the other projects to this thread as I go.
Wow, I was thinking of doing something like this with one of my vintage CFLs.
Compared to the newer ones they are huge. Good to see that you actually got it done.
that's a carefully organised mess, thank you very much :)
[quote=WarHawk-AVG]
oh wow nice! Is that driver a 110vAC to 250mA 12vDC converter? What is the HUGE block of aluminum for?
[/quote]
kind of, it's a constant current 110-220VAC driver that works well with 12-15V worth of LEDs. I haven't tried one with a single LED. It would probably work, just not be as efficient. The large heatsink is because a) I had it and couldn't be bothered cutting it up and b) for some reason I thought the current output of the driver was higher, so I thought the extra cooling would be helpful. It's really rather light for its size though and I can always add another LED later without worrying about heat!
[quote=dchomak]
Wow, I was thinking of doing something like this with one of my vintage CFLs. Compared to the newer ones they are huge. Good to see that you actually got it done.
[/quote]
thanks, I've been meaning to do this for ages. I did a bunch of machining before Christmas so this is a nice way to take a break, plus once semester starts again I'm going to have very little free time so I might as well get stuff done now!
[quote=Cereal_killer]
This is BLF bro, bigger is ALWAYS better! Next up, he remakes that but with copper…
[/quote]
see above :D I wonder how much current I could put through that LED (1A is max spec I think) without stressing the heatsink?
I was stymied in my next light bar construction by the lack of LEDs (major downside of buying stuff from China is the waiting) so I figured I'd make this work light for my little bandsaw in the room next to my garage. The light in there is dismal and wearing a headlamp to cut metal kinda sucks, so this should work a treat.
Used: some random desk lamp, old CPU heatsink from an ancient scrapped PC at work (P2?) - has a nice nickel plated copper base, 5V 900mA power supply from some long dead phone charger, Nichia 119 LED and 45deg optic, 2x AMC7135 350mA current limiters for 700mA total. Should be a couple of hundred lumens give or take, which is quite a lot in a 2ft wide spot.
Power supply just squeezed into the base with the existing weight. Heatsink is screwed to the lamp housing. 7135 chips are hanging around in the air behind the heatsink.
It's not especially pretty, but I really don't give a crap. It's nice'n'bright, won't overheat and cost me about $1.50 I'll get a picture of it in use next time I'm out in the garage at night - the one I took this afternoon doesn't do it justice.
Couple more light bars to build (just have to wire up one with LEDs, whenever they arrive) then I'm done for lighting projects for a while. Plenty of other things that need doing, but at least I'll be able to see them easily!
installed - now I can work on my bike and read the speed chart on my drill press without using a head torch!
trying to decide if I want to put optics in there or not - as it is it produces a nice even light, but some of it is wasted on the walls of the tube and it's a little "glarey".
I'll see what the next one on the other side of the shop looks like when I get to it.
Got to say though, it was pretty neat how much my eyes had to adjust going from the garage out into the garden
finished the last one, so now I can see into my toolbox :)
very happy with the result and didn't take long at all. Would have been quicker if I'd just hot glued the driver on instead of milling a pocket for it or JBwelding the stars on instead of drilling and tapping threads for screws, but it wasn't a lot of extra time. Used one of those 90c Buyincoins 4-5 LED drivers, which work really nicely, especially for so little money!
thanks guys! They're really simple to make and it's now a pleasure working out there at night (ie. most of the time I'm out there) as I don't have to deal with dim patches or wearing a head torch to find something. The only downside is that now the other work rooms look really poorly lit...
what i didnt get is, why would you cut and istalled the LEDs inside the light bar, imo it would be better to just drill the tube for the wireing.
this way you dont wasted any light on the tube walls, i wouldnt even use any reflector/optics so it can have as much flood, if the light will hit your garage walls it will evenly reflect back in to the room, (like regular lamp), less direct light straight from above = less shadow that in some cases can be a problem and you will still need to use your headlamp, this effect would probably be less visible if the bar is longer and the LEDs are more spread in the room.
(this effect i consider to be the only downside when useing LEDs indoor)
alsow, have you consider to use this tipe of LEDs from eBay for this kind of project?
its not a recommendation but im just saying, they are cheaper, easyer to mount as they are more raged and have solid aluminum star/base,
sure they are not as efficient as CREE LEDs but is that realy matter? i mean you are useing main power, not a battery when every mAh need to be considered,
and with only few mAh its cheap to run them anyways, alsow this cheap drivers can easly run with almost any main to 12V addapter or you can get a main ready to use driver.
like this (first two pics) i made this lamp for my desktop.
thanks Ric, I work in there as much as I can which is never as much as I'd like :)
T-boon - all good questions! Having the LEDs inside the tubing was for a couple of reasons. One, the optics are (or will, when I put them on) be protected from knocks, especially when we move in a years time. Two, the tubing was too thin walled to drill and tap for threads (I know, I can glue them on, I just prefer not to) so by putting the LEDs inside I just used nuts on the bolts to hold them in place. I will be putting optics on them at some point, I just haven't gotten round to it. I prefer optics wherever possible simply because they reduce glare a lot.
I haven't considered one of those COB style LEDs yet, largely because I wanted to spread out the light sources as much as possible to increase coverage and reduce shadows. They would work very well for single point lights though. I also really like using the Nichia 119 LEDs - they're very high CRI, which can make an enormous difference in the workshop, and I like the colour. The new ones are a little cool for my liking, but still quite acceptable. They're also cheap as chips - 20 for $14 inc. stars, albeit with a bit of hassle modifying the stars for use.
hmm true, 20 for $14 is cheap, and high CRI is good to have, i wonder what CRI my 10w LED is, its a warm white and looks very good to me,
just one thing, why cant they be used as you did? (spread them out around the room or on metal bar) you dont have to use them only as a single point lights.
you can use like 5 x 10W on a bar for example, and if its too strong, just use the 5W or 3W LEDs…
btw your optics do looks like they reduce glare and i would probly gona have to try them at one point lol
no reason why you can't spread them out on a bar, but the bigger issue is heat dissipation - getting rid of 4-5W over a 4ft long alu bar is easy, doing the same for 40-50W would be a challenge to do passively (ie. no fans). It all comes down to surface area - the more surface area you have the more heat you can dissipate to the air. As LED output drops at higher temps, there's a good reason to keep things moderately cool.
One good use for those 10W LEDs in a shop lighting sense would be if you had higher ceilings than I do - that way you could get away with them spaced every 4-6ft and have a very brightly lit space.
imo, you dont have to worry about heat while runing a LED on 12v 250mAh (3w), i mean your heatsink (aluminum bar) is overkill is it not? dose it actualy get warm?
anyway here what i mean about cheap Chinese LEDs, 17$ for 50 lol, this are the 3w ofc and if you drive them at 250mAh~ then i think heat managment will be easy.
