Todays Project - What did you do today?

[Vinny]

Well not today, but I finally finished it today.  It's been mostly make a bit of progress, have to order something, wait..., make a bit more progress, have to order something else, wait..., and so on.  You know the drill.

Anyway, the surface grinder came with a mount for a lamp, but no lamp.  I had some goose necks from a floor lamp my daughter's friend gave me.  The stand wouldn't stay together - the threads stripped.  Who threads thin tubing and expects it to hold and not strip?  Yeah, I know, the Chinese.   Anyway, I grabbed one of the five goose necks and the metal part of the lamp and went from there.  

First was to make an adapter to go from the goose neck to the holder.  That Thread Detective came in handy there to identify an M10-1.0 thread so I turned a piece of 1/2" aluminum bar, drilled thru, drilled and tapped one end for the goose neck to go into and cut a groove in the other side for a circlip to hold it in the holder.  You can see most of it here in the finished product pic.



I got the LED for the lamp off of ebay, they're meant for home lighting and run on 12V AC or DC.  One will light a room and it only draws 140ma (not the spec, I measured it).  Back to the project...

So I have it all wired up but need a lens.  The "Water Clear Plastic" resin I have is old so the lens came out a bit on the yellow side and was thick enuf to trap some air bubbles, but for this purpose both were acceptable.  Being out of mold material I had to improvise and used the bottom of a can of WD40 for the mold.  Last nite after it came out of the mold it went into the curing oven and finished its cure and this morning I chucked it up and cut the groove for the metal cup that holds the electronics.  Since you couldn't really see anything I didn't take a pic of it, but the next step was to turn down the diameter a bit.  So in the pic below, I have it chucked up between two Rubber Chuckys to trim it down some.



Next is to attach the lens to the lamp.  I used some of that UV glue for it.  I found some better stuff than what they advertise on TV.  Look for Rapid Fix on ebay.



Got it all attached to the grinder, shut off the overhead lighting and turned it on.  I'd say that's sufficient light, although I may rotate the holder 120 degrees to give some more versatility to it.



That's all folks!!