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- Nov 27, 2012
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- 7,854
About a month ago one of my lathe lamps died. One of them was 110v & the transformer in the light died. So I converted it to run directly off the lathe. Well two 50W lamps draws too much current for the lathe's transformer and I was afraid to run them for long like that. The stock lamp was only 25W & there was only one of them. I used to be a LED flashlight modder yet I still never had the desire to run LEDs on my machines. It was time.
My halogen lamps, 24VAC 50W each.
(Another long post, just skip to the end if you want to see the result already
)
Converting them to LED using 7-UP Luxeon-C 4000K 39mm MCPCB modules, Khatod 13° 7-UP 39mm optics & LUXdrive Buck Bullet 500ma CC drivers. What's all that mean? Not drinking any 7-up here, it means 7 emitters mounted on a Metal Core (aluminum) Printed Circuit Board. Khatod is the brand of optics/collimators I'm using with 7 optics integrated into one that mounts directly to the 7-UP LED module. These make installation easier rather than having to mount individual emitters and optics or reflectors individually for multi LED setups like in the old days. The Buck Bullets will drive the LED module (emitters in series) at 500ma (each emitter) constant current (DC) off of 24VAC from the lathe. I got all these parts from LEDsupply.com. No affiliation with them, just really happy with my experience, I highly recommend them.
Luxeon (by LumiLEDs) & Khatod are brands of products I've used a lot in my flashlight modding days. When the Luxeon I came out almost 20 yrs ago that's when LED flashlight started getting good. No more relying on cheap 5mm LEDs in flashlights. My lil brother gave me a modded MiniMag with a Luxeon I in it for Christmas, I was hooked. After all this time I'm back to playing with Luxeons again. It's amazing how smaller & smaller LEDs keep getting.
Past Luxeon generations that I've played with a lot:
From left to right on bottom:
Luxeon I Batwing: 1 watt, aka low dome, the LED that started it all for me. Usually used with optics.
Luxeon I Lambertian: 1 watt, aka high dome, these worked better with reflectors but worked with optics also.
Luxeon III Lambertian: 3 watt
Luxeon V: "6 volt" LED (Lux I-III are "3.5 volt")
Luxeon K2
I don't have any laying around but after that came the Luxeon Rebel & is when the emitter package got much smaller. The ones listed above have long been discontinued. Not sure if anything came after that from LumiLEDs as I got out of it. Look how small the Luxeon-C is. That one on the top left is a Luxeon I side emitting. These never really worked that well IMO.
Ok, no one probably cared about that. Sorry I was just reminiscing. On with the lamps. The heatsinks.
Made a counterbore for some wiggle room for the wires & to clear the mounting screws I'll be using.
Tapped some holes for the MCPCB, hole/slot for the wires, & a bore on the bottom to house the drivers. My mini chuck came in handy for that. I know it's a no no to use an end mill in a drill chuck & the TS but I needed to make the bottom flat after I bored it to size. Didn't take much cutting to do it & it worked out fine. The little slug is to plug the through hole. Made the through hole so I can push out the MCPCB in the future if I ever need to disassemble it.
MCPCBs mounted with Artic Silver Ceramique thermal compound hence the screws. I normally used thermal epoxy in the past.
The optics I got were 13°. I knew they would give too narrow of a beam for me. But they were a good price from LEDsupply so I ordered them to try anyway. As I suspected they did give too narrow of a beam. Good for a flashlight or bike light but not what I wanted for a work lamp. So I bought Khatod optics from another vendor (much more expensive) that are 30°. These gave me more of a flood type beam with no pronounced hotspot & is what I was looking for.
13°
30°
Wired up ready to install.
Oring behind the lens & reused the glass lenses that were in the lamps.
I'm really happy with how these came out. I was originally gonna buy LED lamps from Aliexpress but the ones I liked all had too big of a head. Plus my eyes don't like 6000K-6500K+ color temp which they all were. These LEDs are 4000K which is what I prefer. The fluorescent lights I use in the shop are 4000K also. Was much more work & cost a bit more converting myself but in the end I got exactly what I wanted. These things are so much brighter than the halogens, great color, no more heat from the halogens, & best of all they are powered directly off the lathe. So when I flip the switch to cut power to the lathe, the lamps turn off just like my DRO, no need to flip additional switches.
With all the lights off in the shop & just the two lamps on.
With flourescent overhead lights on.
I'm not able to measure lumens output. At the current I'm running them they're estimated to be over 1100 lumens for each lamp if my math is correct. But that doesn't actually mean much. I do still have a lux meter that I use for comparison. Again doesn't really mean much to me but that's a big difference in numbers. Here's the halogen vs the LED for just one lamp, the carriage mounted lamp. I'm thinking the carriage mounted lamp might even be too bright. I'm considering dropping that one down to 350ma from 500ma. I'll decide later after I use them for a while.
Thanks for looking if you made it this far!
My halogen lamps, 24VAC 50W each.
(Another long post, just skip to the end if you want to see the result already
)Converting them to LED using 7-UP Luxeon-C 4000K 39mm MCPCB modules, Khatod 13° 7-UP 39mm optics & LUXdrive Buck Bullet 500ma CC drivers. What's all that mean? Not drinking any 7-up here, it means 7 emitters mounted on a Metal Core (aluminum) Printed Circuit Board. Khatod is the brand of optics/collimators I'm using with 7 optics integrated into one that mounts directly to the 7-UP LED module. These make installation easier rather than having to mount individual emitters and optics or reflectors individually for multi LED setups like in the old days. The Buck Bullets will drive the LED module (emitters in series) at 500ma (each emitter) constant current (DC) off of 24VAC from the lathe. I got all these parts from LEDsupply.com. No affiliation with them, just really happy with my experience, I highly recommend them.
Luxeon (by LumiLEDs) & Khatod are brands of products I've used a lot in my flashlight modding days. When the Luxeon I came out almost 20 yrs ago that's when LED flashlight started getting good. No more relying on cheap 5mm LEDs in flashlights. My lil brother gave me a modded MiniMag with a Luxeon I in it for Christmas, I was hooked. After all this time I'm back to playing with Luxeons again. It's amazing how smaller & smaller LEDs keep getting.
Past Luxeon generations that I've played with a lot:
From left to right on bottom:
Luxeon I Batwing: 1 watt, aka low dome, the LED that started it all for me. Usually used with optics.
Luxeon I Lambertian: 1 watt, aka high dome, these worked better with reflectors but worked with optics also.
Luxeon III Lambertian: 3 watt
Luxeon V: "6 volt" LED (Lux I-III are "3.5 volt")
Luxeon K2
I don't have any laying around but after that came the Luxeon Rebel & is when the emitter package got much smaller. The ones listed above have long been discontinued. Not sure if anything came after that from LumiLEDs as I got out of it. Look how small the Luxeon-C is. That one on the top left is a Luxeon I side emitting. These never really worked that well IMO.
Ok, no one probably cared about that. Sorry I was just reminiscing. On with the lamps. The heatsinks.
Made a counterbore for some wiggle room for the wires & to clear the mounting screws I'll be using.
Tapped some holes for the MCPCB, hole/slot for the wires, & a bore on the bottom to house the drivers. My mini chuck came in handy for that. I know it's a no no to use an end mill in a drill chuck & the TS but I needed to make the bottom flat after I bored it to size. Didn't take much cutting to do it & it worked out fine. The little slug is to plug the through hole. Made the through hole so I can push out the MCPCB in the future if I ever need to disassemble it.
MCPCBs mounted with Artic Silver Ceramique thermal compound hence the screws. I normally used thermal epoxy in the past.
The optics I got were 13°. I knew they would give too narrow of a beam for me. But they were a good price from LEDsupply so I ordered them to try anyway. As I suspected they did give too narrow of a beam. Good for a flashlight or bike light but not what I wanted for a work lamp. So I bought Khatod optics from another vendor (much more expensive) that are 30°. These gave me more of a flood type beam with no pronounced hotspot & is what I was looking for.
13°
30°
Wired up ready to install.
Oring behind the lens & reused the glass lenses that were in the lamps.
I'm really happy with how these came out. I was originally gonna buy LED lamps from Aliexpress but the ones I liked all had too big of a head. Plus my eyes don't like 6000K-6500K+ color temp which they all were. These LEDs are 4000K which is what I prefer. The fluorescent lights I use in the shop are 4000K also. Was much more work & cost a bit more converting myself but in the end I got exactly what I wanted. These things are so much brighter than the halogens, great color, no more heat from the halogens, & best of all they are powered directly off the lathe. So when I flip the switch to cut power to the lathe, the lamps turn off just like my DRO, no need to flip additional switches.
With all the lights off in the shop & just the two lamps on.
With flourescent overhead lights on.
I'm not able to measure lumens output. At the current I'm running them they're estimated to be over 1100 lumens for each lamp if my math is correct. But that doesn't actually mean much. I do still have a lux meter that I use for comparison. Again doesn't really mean much to me but that's a big difference in numbers. Here's the halogen vs the LED for just one lamp, the carriage mounted lamp. I'm thinking the carriage mounted lamp might even be too bright. I'm considering dropping that one down to 350ma from 500ma. I'll decide later after I use them for a while.
Thanks for looking if you made it this far!
