While attempting to tidy up the gadget-mountain, I found this light that I bought via eBay a while ago. The listing hinted that it was a magnetic light for use on machines. It is. Specifically sewing machines, but it does have other uses where you need a splash of light.
By Chinese standards it's actually quite well made and functional. The circuitry is good and the LEDs are an interesting type being run at a sensible level that will ensure a long life.
This seems to be designed for Chinese factories, so I think it's only available in 220V. But it will still light on 120V. If using on 120V then you could increase the value of the red capacitor to about 1uF or 1.5uF with a rating of 250V for better intensity.
The light is very hackable. You could change the LEDs to a colour of your choice, or even design a completely new LED PCB for either the existing power supply or a custom 12V version.
The eBay keywords to find this are :-
magnetic led machine lamp
Target cost around £7, €8, $10.
If you enjoy these videos you can help support the channel with a dollar for coffee, cookies and random gadgets for disassembly at:-
http://www.bigclive.com/coffee.htm
This also keeps the channel independent of YouTube's advertising algorithms allowing it to be a bit more dangerous and naughty.
By Chinese standards it's actually quite well made and functional. The circuitry is good and the LEDs are an interesting type being run at a sensible level that will ensure a long life.
This seems to be designed for Chinese factories, so I think it's only available in 220V. But it will still light on 120V. If using on 120V then you could increase the value of the red capacitor to about 1uF or 1.5uF with a rating of 250V for better intensity.
The light is very hackable. You could change the LEDs to a colour of your choice, or even design a completely new LED PCB for either the existing power supply or a custom 12V version.
The eBay keywords to find this are :-
magnetic led machine lamp
Target cost around £7, €8, $10.
If you enjoy these videos you can help support the channel with a dollar for coffee, cookies and random gadgets for disassembly at:-
http://www.bigclive.com/coffee.htm
This also keeps the channel independent of YouTube's advertising algorithms allowing it to be a bit more dangerous and naughty.
I have bought two of the dam things recently and I had nothing but trouble with them.
I wanted a magnetic lamp for my wire EDM and of course I picked the cheapest one I could find on Amazon.
I wired the lamp into the machine circuit and for the first few minutes it worked fine.
Soon, I noticed some small clouds coming from the machine.
At first I thought they came from the machined workpiece, but then the light started flickering and eventually failed .
Total run time was ~ 10 minutes.
Returned it to Amazon, bought a new one.
Again I wired it in and the moment I switched it on the capacitor went up in sparks and flames.
I ended up ripping out the rectifier and just connected the wires to an LED power supply.
The first one I tried would not work.
My lamp needs at least 12,5 volts to light up, my driver only goes up to 11 volts (despite claiming 12 volt output)
I replaced it with a 17 volt supply.
Of course I tried out if the lamp would work at this voltage and the tests seemed fine.
In reality, when the lamp was first switched on with the new driver, the glue holding in each LED element slowly heated up and one element after the other just failed.
They seem to just have used some kind of hot glue.
It was so funny seeing this light, we have the same one on our Chinese commercial embroidery machine. It was put in a very strange place on the machine and when I inquired with my sales rep as to why it was there her reply was priceless. She said it was “ to thread needles at night time or when using old person eyes “.
Hi Clive
I use these in my shop for Grinders, Bandsaws, Drill Press, 30 ton Hydraulic Press, Bench Sanders, and anything else where I need more light. I have been using them for about 3 years and none have went bad yet except the one at the Ryobi charger where the batteries went sour on me.
River Island has these on all the head office sewing machines, but all 230v. And they plug directly into the back of the machines not into the mains.
I lost it with the "kink palculator"!!!!! That is awesome.
As a volunteer update to this — I was inspired by the video to buy the USA version of this. The only difference inside is the capacitors. The dropper cap is the same 400v, but a 470nF job, and the electrolytic can cap for smoothing is (likewise) the same 63v rating, but increased in capacity to 100uF. I find this mildly interesting, although I'm unable to explain why, exactly.
I'm planning, at the moment, to see if I can purchase a 5v -> 28vDC boost circuit from eBay, to replace the existing internal supply,so I can run it off a power bank. The area where I live is given to occasional outages because it's vaguely rural, and I often wind up doing my tinkering in weird, awkward spots that are poorly lit because I often wind up doing repair work for friends and relatives who have strange issues with stranger equipment in unspeakably strange places, so such a light would be immensely useful to me 😉
240V device with 120V connector on 30V cable
yep, bought two of them for my sewing machines after watching your video, the units are smaller than I thought would be but should work just fine for my needs. thanks for the video.
I just love it when Clive has a word fumble like kink instead of pink good one Clive thank you for the laugh on this lonely chili winter night.
I got one of those lights for my soldering station and put a UK plug on it. What a can of worms did I open changing the plug, The wires in the cable are incredibly thin, probably 10 strands of ultra fine copper coated aluminium in each core and are amazingly fragile, With the combination of very thin and fragile it took several attempts to put the plug on, I think in the long term the cable will be getting changed with something more suitable.
I use this light on my Pfaff 145, and it performs as expected. Nice to see it also stands up constructionwise 🙂
If you happen to come across a bigclive led coaster in the mountain can i have it I will gladly pay shipping and handling it would be awesome to have one