Piddly box light out of spare parts

bluecrow76

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Jul 10, 2006
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638
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Tiger Town
I made this light out of a spare radio shack project box, some banana plug jacks, a Kai 4-18Vin driver and a Cree Q5 WG that I had used to practice soldering wire to before I delved into my quad M@G mod. I use it as a night light with a wall wart connected. It will also do well as a power outage room light powered by either 6V or 12V SLA batteries (which I somehow seem to have an abundance of). The driver provides 755mA to the emitter. The table below is what I measure running on a 12V and 6V SLA battery. The hours column is simply mAh/mA. I'm sure it's not accurate but I like the numbers. :)

Vin - mAh -- mA -- hours
12 -- 7000 - 240 - 29.2
12 - 12000 - 240 - 50.0
06 -- 4500 - 510 - 8.8


The emitter was AAed to a piece of aluminum bar, which was then AAed to the aluminum lid of the enclosure. I mixed up some blue GID powder and 5 minute set epoxy and covered the top. I mainly did the epoxy/powder thing because I'd never done it before and wanted to get a little experience at mixing and placing. I used scotch tape to make a wall around the aluminum bar and then filled it.

The driver was also AAed to the underside of the aluminum lid of the enclosure. I then took a piece of large heat shrink tubing and epoxied it over the emitter to the lid, and then shrank it around the driver. Hopefully that will provide enough heat transfer to the lid and shielding in the box in case something were to come off.

Lastly, a rocker switch was mounted on top of the box.

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