machine lighting

[Anna 1Participant @anna1]

Hi, all, I wonder if the following is of interest.Despite having good natural and fluorescent lights in my workshop I was struggling to see well at my machines. I looked at the available ready made machine lights but couldn't find any that were bright enough. I went on line and found a range of LED "vehicle work lights"as fitted to tractors etc. The ones I settled on are 24v, 27watts about 4"square and are made as a heavy diecasting and are waterproof.The light output must be around the light output of a 200W traditional light bulb. all for about £10 each ( I bought 4) I had intended to fit them to goose necks but they are too heavy for that so fitted one each under shelves above above the lathe and grinder (have yet to do the mill) They are mounted on drawer runners so they can be positioned /swivelled how I want. Maplins do a range of 24v power supplies the ones I chose will drive 2 lights.and are about £20 each. Pictures are in my folder

Kind regards Anna

[Anna 1Participant @anna1]

[Harry WilkesParticipant @harrywilkes58467]

Hi Anna

I have a couple of these link which I find ok,

H

[Johnboy25Participant @johnboy25]

I have a couple of these too – bought off eBay at a reasonable price. Their small enough to manipulate it to where you need the light especially when internal boring. They run on next to nothing giving a good colour temperature white light and don't get unduly hot.

John

Edited By Johnboy25 on 13/02/2016 15:47:59

[Anna 1Participant @anna1]

Hi john,

they seem to be perfect for what we are doing, especially the low voltage when cutting fluids might be flying around

kind regards Anna

[AjohnwParticipant @ajohnw51620]

I've found these from Ikea ideal. Wiring to be tidied up. It's fitted with a led light. I also have one for the miller. They can be clamped to a shelf or fixed to a wall etc.

Things are little tidier now but still more to do.

John

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[NJHParticipant @njh]

Leave it as it is John – I find it quite encouraging! 😉

Norman

[Terry oldsParticipant @terryolds52232]

can anybody say which Maplins Transformer it is to power two of these lights

Terry

[Neil WyattModerator @neilwyatt]

Interesting. A lot of choice of styles and powers too. The ones claiming to have Cree LEDs seem a bit overpriced though!

[Anna 1Participant @anna1]

Hi, Terry, RE. power supplies the maplin code is N10NB £19-99 24v 65w

Purchase only online

Hope that helps

kind regards

Anna

[Anna 1Participant @anna1]

Hi, Terry, just had a thought

Obviously if you choose lights of even higher wattage than the ones I bought ,you need to match and buy the appropriate power supply

Anna

[Anna 1Participant @anna1]

Hi, Terry, just had a thought

Obviously if you choose lights of even higher wattage than the ones I bought ,you need to match and buy the appropriate power supply

Anna

[Terry oldsParticipant @terryolds52232]

thanks for that,,

[Anna 1Participant @anna1]

Hi, Terry, again, an even better choice would be code N9NB, it has a built in power lead, but you will have to put on your own plug, same price and power

Anna

[AjohnwParticipant @ajohnw51620]

I also have a couple of the Ikea lights linked to earlier. I find them pretty hopeless for situations like mine were the lighting levels are pretty high – 50w efficient 5ft strip light on a rather high ceiling (10ft) and a little behind me when I am on the lathe. The ceiling height dims these down. The ones I linked to provide a decent sized pool of light. The stalk ones at the distance needed for that hardly provide any extra light at all. I also found that they need too much fiddling about and the light rather close to the work.

I can shorten the wire to the light Norman. Using mains doesn't bother me providing the cables are safely out of the way. As to the tidy up a builder was supposed to be about to make some changes with walls post xmas so I have delayed totally sorting things out. No builder so far. At the moment I couldn't do any work if I wanted too. Increasingly I do want to do some so will have to find some hopefully short term solutions to having too much gear none of which I want to get rid of.

John

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[Johnboy25Participant @johnboy25]

Hi.. If you're going for LED lighting you would only need a power supply with a 1/10 of that mentioned. 65 Watts would fine for halogen lamps. Just a thought….

John

[Anna 1Participant @anna1]

Hi, John,

I tried 80 watt mains halogen above the lathe and it just wasnt enough, maybe it is just old age catching up.

If you look at the pictures which were taken in good daylight you can see the nice even beam of light from

the leds

kind regards

Anna

[Nick_GParticipant @nick_g]

.

I am not a fan of LED lights in the workshop. I find the 'quality' of the light harsh and not a nice colour temp. They are however getting better as the development and technology improves.

I have 2 spotlights with a GU10 lamp fitting over each machine spaced apart with the beams crossing to avoid shadow areas as much as possible. This is in addition to the flou fittings providing general workshop lighting. – I purchased LED GU10 lamps to fit into these spotlights. However I quickly changed them back to the original filament type lamps. They are not as economical but IMHO are a much nicer light output to work under.

Nick

[AjohnwParticipant @ajohnw51620]

These are the Ikea lights I use

**LINK**

They do other forms with the same shade using the same led e14 bulb. As it's a spot light I find they need to be about 50 – 60cm from the machine bed. As you can see in the photo they add considerably to the lighting levels in the room which are actually rather high.

Sounds like Anna needs her pupil size reducing to pin pricks in order to see well. I need 1 1/2 dioptre reading glasses but for perfect vision at 250mm at "normal" illumination levels I need around 3. If I wore those a lot my eyes would weaken further so they only come out when needed. I find these lights just about right wearing the reading glasses. My distance vision is fine.

Noticing harsh lighting comments I think it depends on the colour temperature of the led's. Stick to 2700 to 3000k and they are ok. The higher colour temperature ones put out an immense amount of blue light – more than normal levels as the blue they use is in a regions our eyes are not all that sensitive to. There are some eye safety concerns about higher colour temperature leds down to high levels of the blue as well. The blue also makes the light output figure look better than they really are.

John

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Edited By Ajohnw on 14/02/2016 00:15:45

Edited By Ajohnw on 14/02/2016 00:17:10

[Neil WyattModerator @neilwyatt]

I see Lidl has some free-standing LED reading lights for £19.99 that look pretty useful for armchair engineering

Neil

[Anna 1Participant @anna1]

Hi, A John W

Unfortunately I have had to wear glasses since childhood being shortsighted, in the order of 3.5 diopters but in recent years I have become more longsighted. certainly the early led were not a pleasant light, but they are improving fast.and the fact that the lights are waterproof and low voltage appealed to me, Of course one can choose a lower wattage worklight as there is a big range available for vehicles etc

Kind regards

Anna

[AjohnwParticipant @ajohnw51620]

I just replaced the bulbs in the living room wall lights with led ones. I bought a load of gas works style fluorescents that looked ok in them – short spiral ones. Most have gone so I thought I would try led especially when I found B22 fittings are available and later in G45 as well. These are nice and compact. The light is less harsh than the spirals. I only fitted those because I was fed up with bulbs blowing where ever I bought them from. Out of curiosity I looked at the light out of the led lights with a spectroscope. No spikes, unlike the spirals. Must admit that surprised me and I suspect it's down to the white envelope that forms the bulb shape and contains the leds. At 4.5w they are supposed to be equal to 45w tungsten. I'd say a bit more as the light is a little more directional in a g45 shape.

John

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[MuzzerParticipant @muzzer]

I've seen a few people using these LED strips for lighting machine tools. They are low voltage, waterproof and self-adhesive, can be daisy-chained (using a variety of X and T pieces etc) and are available with remote control and dimming function. And available in a variety of colours including warm(?) white.

The problem I found with the popular single LED "Jansjo" spotlight from Ikea (not the one John talks about), is the point source nature of the light. It casts sharp, contrasting shadows, so although you may have a fair bit of light on the target, everything else is in relative shadow – unless of course you have good backlighting too, which suggests a better solution.

My preferred solution now is to have several panel or strip lights on the ceiling so that there is good, diffuse lighting throughout. When I am finally released from this armchair workshop into a real one again, I will be fitting some of those 36W LED luminaire units from Screwfix or Toolstation. Good news is that we finally move into a new to us house tomorrow.

Haha, 3.5 diopters. I wish. I can do better than that by a factor of 2. I should get some form of disability allowance but it means that I can focus on small objects about 2-3" from my eyes by removing my glasses, a sort of macro vision. Pity I am completely lacking the talent to be a watchmaker.

Merry

Edited By Muzzer on 14/02/2016 11:40:55

[Clive FosterParticipant @clivefoster55965]

Those luminaire units linked to by Muzzer look interesting but why the huge disparity in price for what looks to be the same thing? I'm getting tired of changing out 58 W fluorescents in my workshop. Lucky to get 5 years out of a tube, estimated 3,000 to 4,000 hours life so those luminaries may work out cheaper in the long run.

Screwfix apparently don't have the best reputation for LED lights, some of their ranges have apparently been short in life and low on performance.

Warm white isn't best for worship use tho'. The colder lights may be harsh but seem much better for seeing details. For the lathe I have an old style build on articulated arm light and a LED strip style unit, Lidl special about 4 years back, 2 ft 6 or so above and a foot behind centre line to give general local light to supplement the shop lights.

Clive.

[Neil WyattModerator @neilwyatt]

> Warm white isn't best for worship use tho'.

I thought altar candles counted as warm white

Neil

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