Author Topic: Improved Bridgeport Lighting  (Read 2996 times)

Offline awemawson

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Improved Bridgeport Lighting
« on: July 08, 2021, 06:12:01 AM »
Some years back I replaced the original incandescent machining light on the Bridgeport with a pair of Ikea LED reading lights. Someone at the time warned me that the flexy tubes tend to droop and they were right - good lights but tend to sag just at the wrong time!

So I've been on the look out for a replacement and came across someone using a 'ring light' like the flash boys put round their headlights. Tucking the idea in the back of my mind it popped out again when I saw an '8" Ring Makeup Light' on eBay for the princely sum of £8.95 intended to run off a USB wall wart.

Checking the finances I reckoned that I could just about squeeze it out of the budget and pressed the 'buy it now' button. Well it turned up a few days back but apart from checking that it lights up I've not had the time to try it, but time magically appeared today.

The 8" diameter allows the quill to pass through it, and the side presented  1/4" Whitworth camera mount could conveniently, with a suitable bracket, graft it onto / into the fitting on the quill intended for  a DTI.

A simple bracket was conceived, hot bent, and the job was finished - just need to decide how to tidy the cables up. It gives good even illumination - I think it's rated at 5 watts at full tilt. In series with it's lead is a controller letting you adjust the colour balance and brightness, but I will probably only use it on stark white and full.

The only downside that I've found so far is that you have to press the 'on' button on this controller when power is applied whereas the previous lights came on without intervention, but this is no great deal.

I'm leaving the Ikea lights on at the present as I evaluate the ring light.
Andrew Mawson
East Sussex

Offline awemawson

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Re: Improved Bridgeport Lighting
« Reply #1 on: July 08, 2021, 06:40:53 AM »
While clearing up all the bits that came with the Makeup Ring Light I found an odd bit of plastic that the leaflet referred to  as a 'Remote Bluetooth Camera Shutter'

Well it is and it works with my iPhone - how amazingly useful for taking pictures of machining when you've already run out of hands, there is even a mini tripod in the kit!
Andrew Mawson
East Sussex

Offline AdeV

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Re: Improved Bridgeport Lighting
« Reply #2 on: July 08, 2021, 07:09:01 PM »
...the fitting on the quill intended for  a DTI

Oh, so that's what it's for!

I've used that fitting on my Bridgeport to hold a vertical bar to stop my tapping head body rotating, that's about it!

Nice work with the ring light; I have one for my still camera, bought because it looked useful for close-up work & was cheap! I think I've used it twice... might have a look to see if it'll fit 'round my quill - don't think it's as big as yours (the light, not the quill).
Cheers!
Ade.
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Location: Wallasey, Merseyside. A long way from anywhere.
Occasionally: Zhengzhou, China. An even longer way from anywhere...

Offline Muzzerboy

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Re: Improved Bridgeport Lighting
« Reply #3 on: July 11, 2021, 08:27:55 AM »
I've been meaning to get round to this on my large mill and was thinking it would need to be one of those "angel eye" ring things sold to boy racers. However, I managed to find a 10" version of this "influencer" light on Amazon at £7.09 including free next day delivery. Bargain buckets. This left me with no option. https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B08CXLVWNN/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o01_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

Like yours, mine came with a Xmas cracker "tripod", a flexible gooseneck thing and a remote control shutter thing for smart phones.

I played with mine, took it apart and fiddled around with the scope to see what I had here. There are 2 rows (rings) of LEDs - cold white and yellow. The controller switches between one, the other or both of them. When you switch between the light colour settings, the current consumption stays the same, so clearly the current in the LEDs is PWM modulated by the SO-8 IC to keep the current within the USB limit. However, clearly this means only some of the LEDs are ever fully utilised. And judging by how cool they run, they are barely being challenged.

 

So I removed the controller from the equation and hard wired both rings in parallel. I'd have put them in series but the tracking on the IMS board (aka aluminium single-sided PCB) wouldn't allow that. Playing with the PSU, I can see that a 0.47R metal clad resistor in series with them would give a convenient 2 - 2.5A in the light if supplied with 5V. After running thus for 30 mins, the peak temperature on the LEDs is around  40C and the resistor is around 45C. Heat is the killer of LEDs, so this is the bottom line here.

The Shizuoka doesn't have a DTI hole but I'm not averse to drilling holes in it, so that's what happened.

 
 

Thanks for giving me the impetus to finally get off my backside and see to this!


Offline Muzzerboy

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Re: Improved Bridgeport Lighting
« Reply #4 on: July 11, 2021, 08:32:59 AM »
I can't get the photos the right way up. Websites seem to differ in the metadata they use to orientate the pics. I tried to rotate them using W10 Photos but this site is obviously too clever to be fooled by that. What's the trick here?

Offline awemawson

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Re: Improved Bridgeport Lighting
« Reply #5 on: July 11, 2021, 10:24:29 AM »
I manipulate my pictures in Paint (under Win7 !) and they seem to come out ok on this forum, but orientation is a bit random on the Mig Welding forum - no idea why  :scratch:


Here I copied and manipulated one of your pictures:

Andrew Mawson
East Sussex