LED conversion for IKEA Espressivo Task Light?

[FurrBear]

Just wondering if anyone's done this, or pondered it?

The lamp comes with a 12V, 20W halogen bulb. If I understand the math right, that means the power supply is providing about 1.67 amps of current.

In fact, that might be too much current for most LEDs - at least for the ones useful in this application. (I think a Cree MC-E would be too much for a task light of this nature....) Given that the lamp's designed to contend with the heat put out by a halogen bulb - heatsinking an LED might be problematic.

Any thoughts, suggestions, pointers? This is more an issue of wondering if it can be reasonably done than a "must do" upgrade. Virtually all the rest of the lighting in my abode is CFL already.

[2xTrinity]

Chances are the "power supply" is just a 10:1 stepdown transformer that turns 120V AC (from the wall) into 12V AC. The power supply will not always deliver 20 watts. If you were to place a 10W bulb in, it would consume 10. An incandescent lamp doesn't require any sort of regulation, you just apply a known voltage (doesn't matter if it's AC or DC) and the bulb will determine the power drawn. LEDs are much more sensitive to their power supply -- they require DC and a regulator that actually controls the current.

If you connected LEDs to this without your own separate driver, most likely they would either not light up at all or you'd destroy them immediately. In order to get that lamp to run an LED, you'd need to install a rectifier and a driver circuit. Once you do that, you could drive the LED as hard as you want.

[FurrBear]

Thanks for the insight; given the inexpensive nature of the lamp, I'm sure you're right about it being a simple step-down transformer. If I really want an LED task light - there's probably a much easier way to accomplish that.