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Showing results for tags 'LEDs on a lead'.
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Well, I had a halogen bulb in my old yellow construction floodlight for years.. I mean YEARS! The best bulb I'd ever found.. Anyway, it eventually died last year and I fitted another, which died within a few months again! So I gave up the 300watt halogens that die all the time and fit in a casing that doesn't go in many places under a car, and gives off nearly all those watts as heat anyway! It was designed to illuminate a building site, I will admit. It was off to Bunnings and Jaycar... $3 for a metre of 40mm drain pipe that gets cut into 100mm lengths Four of those get drilled with 3.2mm bits for rivets. A, B, C back off the base to fix the light, 1 & 2 for wire hooks and 3 gets drilled out to 10mm for the cord. Off to Bunnings for $20 worth of 12volt 4watt LEDs, the cheapest in the shop. One rivet get a washer under it to push the bulb over a tad and hold it steady. I had leads lying around from the hospital staff running over them with the floor cleaning machines I fix, so I used 10mm leads. Far too big really, but the LED worklight in the Woolshed suffers from a tiny 12V lead that breaks, and a cigarette lighter plug on a transformer that pulls out all the time. If you can, find some in between! So the wires get soldered onto the bulb, and a grommet gets a ziptie to stop the lead pulling out. A hit with a hot-glue gun helps hold it all together. A stainless strip we pulled out of the Pulsar's wiper blades when we changed them last week makes nice hooks. I can hang it facing up or facing down. The other end of the light lead is a pain in 10mm as the jack cover can't fit over it. So out comes the heatshrink in two sizes and the male plug gets soldered on. Then I hit it with the heat... At the other end is a Jaycar kit box worth $3something and a $7 downlight transformer. I'd nailed the wife's little lunch box but got smacked for trying to steal the $8 supermarket clipseal container, so the Jaycar trip was worthwhile. The 12V output goes to mono sound jacks, and Jaycar only had two in stock so that's all I've made so far. All I had to do was put the cover back on the box and presto! Two hopefully bullet-proof worklights to throw around cars and two more to follow. With 4 bulbs its only 16watts compared to the 50watts that transformer usually runs. The jacks are $3 each, so $12, t'former was $7, LEDs $20, grommets a couple of bucks, drain tube $3 odd... Meh- $50 buys 4 lights, less than the cheapest single LED worklight I found on the web. I'll let you know how it goes...
