Power Tool WorkLight LED Mod

I am posting an update on this subject I started a few months ago. Talking about this flashlight mod mentioned above. I discovered a very simple, and very inexpensive way to mod ALL power tool work-lights to LED! My flashlight is a Milwaukee V28. 28VDC, 3.0Ah battery. The original lamp drew 25 watts. I tried to use resistors to drop the voltage to a useable 3VDC to run the LED's but they got extremely hot. These were 15 watt resistors. It worked, but the resistors got too hot to install in the plastic case. Plus it was still drawing 18 watts. So I had to think of something else. I was at a yard sale one day and while digging through a box of wires, I saw a tag that said, INPUT: 10-30VDC OUTPUT: 5VDC @ 2A. It was an old Motorola cell phone car charger. This was the trick, especially for $0.50. I took it apart and saw this tiny little regulator circuit board. I wired the 28V side and installed the board into the head of the light using hot glue. Turned the light on and check voltage. Sure enough, 5VDC output! I bought a 32 LED flashlight from the hardware store, removed the LED board from the head. I used a grinder to widen the reflector to fit the LED board. Nice and tight. I put a 3.3 ohm, 3 watt resistor in series with the LEDs and reassembled the light. The 28V side pulls 100mA, the 5V side pulls 700mA, a total of just over 2 watts! This is a great mod for any incandescent work-light and the battery last forever. I have one battery that will not run my drill, but with this mod, it will run this flashlight for over 5 hours! I have already modded 4 since I did this and everyone was flawless. DeWalt, Hitiachi, Boush, and Skill. Hot glue is your best friend when modding electronics. This takes some electronic knowledge to do this and awareness is key. Some of these work-lights have a circuit board in them to monitor the battery level and turn the light off before completely draining the battery. Do not worry about this. Treat this mod as if you are simply changing the lamp in the light. This mod cost me about $6! I have a nice, white, super bright work-light that looks like it was factory made! And the best thing is, if you knock it over, the lamp doesn't blow. Have fun!

Pics ?

CamoNinja said:

Pics ?

Click to expand...

Yes. I will upload some pics!

Here are some of the pics of the project. I wish i could get a better spot shot. My camera does not do good without a flash.



















The first pic is one of the regulator boards inside a car charger. Enjoy!

I will also load pics of other mods I have done sometime this week.

I belong at CPF!:welcome: ME!

Looks like a nice mod. It'll be cooler if you could get a high power LED into it, but the plastic will prevent heat for escaping, so you would either have to drive the LED at low currents, or open holes in the head of the light so air can get in and cool the heatsink.

A belated :welcome:

Yea I know. This flashlight has vent holes in the head to release the heat, and there is some heat. Being that this one has a larger head, it doesn't get as hot. The Hitachi light I did had a much smaller head. I used an old IC heatsink in it and relocated the chip into the body of the light. Runs much cooler. But there is still plenty of room in this one and I am not against a fan, LOL!

Thanks!

In that case, stick a nice large CPU heatsink in it (with the fan) and direct drive 9 XM-Ls wired in series

Potential max output at the emitter: 7600 - 8700 lumen, or 5000 - 6500 lumen out the front depending on reflector/optic selection.

That'll be a lot of heat though (~85 watts), so make sure to run the the fan on max and have some nice holes for airflow. Also, runtime might not be great, but it would be bright!