LED Work lights for milling machine

These are 48 white LED panels which I have mounted on my milling machine. Bought them on e-bay for $2.59 each which included free postage from Hong Kong.

Powered them from an old 12v plugpack. They come with double sided tape which I stuck to the underside of the mill head. (shown below iluminating work area)

Hope that thus was useful.

Edited By Paul Lousick on 30/01/2013 11:15:22

That looks a bargain. Paul

Thanks for posting.

MichaelG.

Michael,

A bargain and better than the lights which I had already added to the mill. The originals were mounted on flexible arms and mounted to the side of the column. (you can see one of them in the top photo) They originally had incandescent lamps fitted but they would not stand up to the constant vibration and quickly failed. Replacing the globes with LED's solved this but they were always getting in the way of the drill lever and the electric cables powering the drive motor. These do a much better job, there is no glare from the lights and they are directly over the work area.

Paul.

I had a look on ebay yesterday and decided that 2 for £3.10p delivered was worth a try, so I will report back when they arrive.

Edited By Chris B on 31/01/2013 08:56:02

I also ordered a pair for my mill. Much more space efficient than housing/arm type lamps. Thanks for the tip Paul!

JD

Got mine from

http://stores.ebay.com.au/dreammacys6au?_trksid=p4340.l2563

Search for: 48 SMD White LED Light Panel T10 Festoon Ba9s Dome 12V

Found some at £1.29 free postage.

Ordered a dozen

After seeing Paul's post yesterday I noticed that some suppliers used 5050 LEDs and some used 3528 LEDs. The 5050s are a slightly higher power rateing so I ordered two of those. (At £3.00 each including post.) I too will report back when they arrive. (Probably early March.)

Les.

I have just received one of these panels to try out (from UK source to get it quickly-although more expensive) and they are very nice indeed. At 10V they take about 150mA and at 12V the current is about double, although the change in light output is not great. The light output is pretty good, but it is the small size (6 by 4 cm) which makes them easy to mount on the mill, perhaps with a clear plastic cover to protect the led's. Conclusion- well worth buying-off now to buy some more from China.

Doug

just fitted mine. I recon they will fall off due to not sticking flat, but a bit of epoxy will cure that. Otherwise this is the best accessory I ever bought!!! Brilliant!!!

The two LED panels I ordered from Hong Kong arrived today. Here is the details of them.

Notes on rectangular panel of 48 type 5050 LED's (Type 5050 LED's have 6 pins on the package.)

Bought on Ebay from seller bumbfine0102 on 30/01/2013 at 15:20 Price £3.00 each (Free post)

Arrived 14/02/2013

Size 60 mm x 45 mm

The array consumes about 360 mA with 12 volt supply.

The 5050 LED package contains 3 LED's

The LED's are arranged as follows.

The three LED's in each package are connected in parallel.

They are arranged as 16 groups of three LED packages in series with a 120 ohm resistor in series. (Resistor in negative lead.)


360/16 = 22.5 mA So each package of three LED's passes 22.5 mA Each LED within the package passes 7.5 mA

I think they may be too bright with 2 of them mounted next to the spindle and run from 12 volts.
I will give another update when I try them on the mill.

Les.

Have a look at ledhut.co.uk

Edited By David Clark 1 on 14/02/2013 21:35:38

Hi les,

If your LED's are too bright can you reduce the voltage with a variable resistor ?

If i understand correctly, that's 22.5 mA through each chain of leds, so dropping 120R x 22.5 = 2.7V.

So (12-2.7)/3 = 3.1V per LED, which is about right for white LEDs.

Because the LEDs act as near constant voltage devices they will still drop around 3V wether the current is higher or lower.

The 16 120R resistors are effectively in parallel, so effectively about 8R. You could try a wirewound 47R variable resistor which should give you a good range of dimming.

Neil

Just bought an electronic LED driver for £4 on ebay (plenty people sell them around the same price) and it is perfect for running these panels. The unit is small and can supply up to 1A at 12V so could run a few panels. It also has the advantage of isolating the mains supply from the machine.

Doug

Update on the LED panels (48 x 5050 type SMD LED's)

I have now fitted them to my X3 mill. They give just the right amount of light.

Neil,
I totaly agree with your calculations. For another project I needed to run 5 1Watt LED's from a 12 volt supply (Which could vary from about 11.5 to 14 volts.) To avold the power loss using resistors I found some step up regulator boards on Ebay uslng the LM2577S IC which could be easily modified to work as a constant current source. As the reference voltage on this IC is 1.25 volts it means there is very little power lost in the current sense resistor.

Les.

My two arrived this morning. I hooked one up to a car battery and was surprised at the amount of light they put out! My question is: is there a 12v source within the mill supply that I can tap into, to save having to buy a separate power supply? My mill is an XJ-12 from Amadeal (similar to Sieg X3) - picture inmy album - I have a block diagram for the wiring, but not circuit diagram, as such.

John

.

This may work; but the preferred way of dimming LEDs is to use PWM [pulse width modulation]

... There are some very neat little dimmers available on ebay; at prices that make it pointless to bother building one.

MichaelG.

For Example

Edited By Michael Gilligan on 04/03/2013 13:40:31

Hi John,
There is no way to power your lights from the speed controller board in your mill if it is the same as the controller in the X3. There are 2 reasons for this.

1 The 12 volt rail is provided by an LM78L12 regulator which is only rated at 100 mA

2 All the power to the board is from a bridge rectifier connected directly to the mains. THIS MEANS THAT EVERYTING IS LIVE AT MAINS VOLTAGE SO IT WOULD BE VERY DANGEROUS.

I suggest using a power supply simiar to this one on ebay. You may find one cheaper than this one.

Les.