Mattaus
Flashlight Enthusiast
Hey all,
I got onto the forums when the need arose to create some good flood lights for an upcoming camping trip. Traditional 4WD lights were out of the question because of their high power usage and cost - we will have no way to recharge our deep cycle battery while we are gone so the lights needed to be low current draw. Also being the tight a*s I am and my love of tinkering I decided to give making one myself a go.
After a lot of discussion on these forums I finally decided to use the existing shell of an $8 150W halogen work light from my local hardware store as the base for the mod. I used this driver from DX. I replaced the C1 capacitor so that it would work with a 12V battery - this was easier than I imagined once I knew what I was doing!!!
I gutted it of all the existing electronics and then cut and bent into shape a thick aluminium bar that was then screwed and thermal glued into the body. This will form the base for mounting the LEDs and reflector and hopefully allow the heat generated to be transfered to the case.
In order to make soldering the LEDs easy and to get over the hump caused by the screw being centered on the plate above, I made a smaller plate on which the LEDs were glued and soldered. This was then thermal pasted to the first aluminium plate.
The electronics for the whole thing were made to be modular and mounted in the back of the flood light in the old wiring area (kept the wires away from the heat of the halogen globe I think). The driver connects to the LEDs via a traditional DC power pack type plug. I didn't want to hardwire the LEDs to the driver - makes it easier to swap the driver at a later stage. A switch was also added.
The original reflector was kept but had gaping holes in it from where the halogen ceramic holder went. I covered these with tin foil....better than nothing :tinfoil:
The 'flappy' things are so that it doesn't push into the wiring, but still sort of covers the remaining gap.
And the finished article. It still needs a proper power cable added but I will hopefully do that this weekend:
A bit dodgy but it works really well. Easily brighter than the 150W halogen it replaces (to my eyes anyway) and at only 29W. The pattern seems very even and floody. I will be doing this again to a twin 500W work light tower soon, and will be using some 3A drivers instead....so they should be even better.
I have a control shot taken with the halogen, but am yet to take one with the LEDs for comparison. If people are interested I will try get that sooner rather than later!
Hope this interest someone lol. I learnt soooo much doing it and now I'm hookedlovecpf
I butchered the hell out of the 2 outer LEDs - I had to scrape back the contacts closer to the emitters themselves after managing to pull off the solder pads THREE TIMES. I also got thermal paste everywhere after the first attempt at putting it together. It took me 2 hours to clean up. Lessons definitely learnt.
Hopefully my next project is a bit more professional looking :thumbsup:
Cheers.
- Matt
I got onto the forums when the need arose to create some good flood lights for an upcoming camping trip. Traditional 4WD lights were out of the question because of their high power usage and cost - we will have no way to recharge our deep cycle battery while we are gone so the lights needed to be low current draw. Also being the tight a*s I am and my love of tinkering I decided to give making one myself a go.
After a lot of discussion on these forums I finally decided to use the existing shell of an $8 150W halogen work light from my local hardware store as the base for the mod. I used this driver from DX. I replaced the C1 capacitor so that it would work with a 12V battery - this was easier than I imagined once I knew what I was doing!!!
I gutted it of all the existing electronics and then cut and bent into shape a thick aluminium bar that was then screwed and thermal glued into the body. This will form the base for mounting the LEDs and reflector and hopefully allow the heat generated to be transfered to the case.
In order to make soldering the LEDs easy and to get over the hump caused by the screw being centered on the plate above, I made a smaller plate on which the LEDs were glued and soldered. This was then thermal pasted to the first aluminium plate.
The electronics for the whole thing were made to be modular and mounted in the back of the flood light in the old wiring area (kept the wires away from the heat of the halogen globe I think). The driver connects to the LEDs via a traditional DC power pack type plug. I didn't want to hardwire the LEDs to the driver - makes it easier to swap the driver at a later stage. A switch was also added.
The original reflector was kept but had gaping holes in it from where the halogen ceramic holder went. I covered these with tin foil....better than nothing :tinfoil:
The 'flappy' things are so that it doesn't push into the wiring, but still sort of covers the remaining gap.
And the finished article. It still needs a proper power cable added but I will hopefully do that this weekend:
A bit dodgy but it works really well. Easily brighter than the 150W halogen it replaces (to my eyes anyway) and at only 29W. The pattern seems very even and floody. I will be doing this again to a twin 500W work light tower soon, and will be using some 3A drivers instead....so they should be even better.
I have a control shot taken with the halogen, but am yet to take one with the LEDs for comparison. If people are interested I will try get that sooner rather than later!
Hope this interest someone lol. I learnt soooo much doing it and now I'm hookedlovecpf
I butchered the hell out of the 2 outer LEDs - I had to scrape back the contacts closer to the emitters themselves after managing to pull off the solder pads THREE TIMES. I also got thermal paste everywhere after the first attempt at putting it together. It took me 2 hours to clean up. Lessons definitely learnt.
Hopefully my next project is a bit more professional looking :thumbsup:
Cheers.
- Matt
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