Todays Project - What did you do today?

[TomG]

I'm in the process of converting the lighting in my home over to LED's and my latest victim is the energy sucking 500 watt halogen floor lamp in the living room. LED's typically have around a 50,000 hour lifetime as long as they stay cool, so the first order of business was to make a heat sink capable of keeping the beastly 100W LED comfortable. There are extruded heat sinks available, but I of course I wasn't able to find one that met my requirements so it was out to the shop. The stock was parted from a 6.50 piece of round aluminum and a mandrel pressed into one side to mount in the dividing head, then using a 3/32" x 5" slitting saw I proceeded to cut the 45 fins. This was one of those projects that didn't seemed pretty simple and straight forward at the start, but ended up taking around 3 hours to finish. Tomorrow it'll get some holes to feed the wires through and some mounting holes on the bottom. It should be illuminating my living room tomorrow night.

Tom