Offroad, for my Scoles dental light, I used a 3/4 to 1/2 copper tubing. I had to cut it the right height so that the LED star sits on the bottom ledge of it with the lens fitting on top. I used thermal adhesive to make sure it stays there. You'll have to trim the LED star to make it fit inside. I used a dremel.
The tricky part is mounting it. Since yours are TTL, you'll have to be creative with this part. Wish I could help you with that. Maybe if you had an extra bracket.
The way I mounted my light is using the flip handle that came with my loupes to make them flip up and down easier. This is what I used for the base. I found this light at a dollar store. Take a close look at the pic.
I cut the flashlight off, removed the base from the clip and epoxied it onto the lever. Before I did that, I fit the arm on the copper tubing with the dental LED light. At one point I thought the ball was a little loose so I spray painted it so it gives it more friction.
This is Dr. Mike Scoles home made original project. Thanks again, Mike for putting this together. All the credit goes to this guy. Can't say enough about Mike, he's awesome!
A few things have changed, like instead of the canister a copper tubing was used. For the battery pack, I copied Mike and used a LiPo battery used for RC toys.
This is Mike's original post:
Parts list for Surgical light
Luxeon LED #5027-WP14 $7 www.luxeonstar.com
Luxeon LED Driver #3023-D-N-700 $17 www.luxeonstar.com
3 degree lense #OPK2-1-003 $3 www.luxeonstar.com
2000mah batt lion battery pack $30 email [email protected]
Switch $3 local electronics store
Charge jack $2
Phono female plug $3
Phono cord $2
Plastic box $8
Lion Charger $20 see link below
https://01836cd.netsolstores.com/index.asp?PageAction=VIEWPROD&ProdID=825
Conductive Epoxy local electronics store
Blood sugar test strips container
The pictures are pretty self explanatory, I have addressed a few things that might not be intuitive below, other than that, its pretty simple. I got the bulk of the things I needed at an electronics store, try to find a place a little more heavy duty than radio shack.
When you're at the electronics store, buy one of those small PC cooling fans. Plug a 9volt battery into it and a base where you can aim it. It provides enough of a breeze to keep solder fumes out of your face. I think it was $4.
When making the battery packs and the cord for the LED, always use a volt meter to make sure you are going in the right direction.
I didn't use a potentiometer, if you want to adjust the light, you can buy a driver with one on the luxeon site.
Heat Sink-you must do a heat sink, or you will melt the lense. There are many different ways you can do this, I used a piece of aluminum and a quarter. This is the beauty of a DIY project, you get to be creative. I think finding a metal tube with just a bit smaller diameter than the base of the LED would be ideal, I will keep looking. Go to a good hardware store like Ace, they carry brass and aluminum tubing in small sizes. You just need a way for the base plate of the LED to send its heat elsewhere, as long as you use conductive glue, and a large enough chunk of metal, you will be in good shape.
Make sure you run the cord through the hole in the light case before you solder it onto the LED. I've lost count on how many times I've soldered stuff prematurely…
You need a bracket to mount the LED to your glasses. If you have orascoptic loupes, you can order their bracket. If you have an old light source, you can adapt its bracket to this one. If you have a sheervision LED light, I would keep the headlight, and just make new packs with the Luxeon driver. This driver/battery combo is twice as bright as the sheervision set up with the NiMh battery pack. We have several different brands of loops in our office, (hygienists and assistants have them) tough to make a universal bracket. This is where the fun part is, you get to fabricate your own! A piece of thin metal bent at an angle and screwed to the middle part of the glasses would work fine.
You can use the sheervision black plastic boxes and just replace the driver and battery if you like, much easier than buying new boxes. I would suggest new plugs, the ones that come with the sheervision are fairly low quality, hence the light flickering. I posted pics of the conversion.
My only word of caution: DO NOT SKIP THE HEATSINK The LED creates a ton of heat, if you use a metal housing instead of plastic, and you use conductive epoxy to glue the base of the LED to the metal housing, you wouldn't need it. The sheervision and orascoptic LED lights use the entire enclosure as the heatsink. You can't do that with plastic. I left my light on for one hour straight and the quarter was too hot to touch, but the temperature remained constant after the first few minutes. I used an infrared heat gun to monitor the temperature throughout the hour. I may have a buddy machine some metal housings for me.
You guys are seeing my first try at the headlight. I already have a bunch of ideas to make it better. I wanted to get this out with the parts list so people could get working on it. I would like to find a better source for the lenses, I think one with a tighter focus would be better. I tried to make this as simple (ie crude) as possible so people could make it with easily obtainable items. I'll tweak on it in the future and make nicer ones. Please contribute improvements if you come up with any. My way may be the worst way to do this, other viewpoints are always welcome. I still think this would be a great project for a teenager with a little mechanical inclination...
Again like I said in my earlier post, the best thing would be heading over to dental town to see the whole thread if you could. Alot of info there that would be difficult to post here.
