Homemade LED Puck light.

[Kenom]

A few years ago I purchased a few halogen puck lights for my computer desk so I would have sufficient illumination in the dark without overdoing it. However, my tap dimmer that I had attached to the unit (designed specifically for the lights) kept blowing up my powersupply for the lights.



I have a few 1 watt Luxeon emitters pulled from some Dorcy 1 watt flashlights that I modified into lasers. They've been sitting around with no use so I figured why not modify the pucks to work off led lights.



The first problem I ran into was obviously the reflector is not suited for mounting a LED so I had to completely pull the reflectors out and replace them with a better reflector. I'm not a machiner so I had to improvise something and one day while looking at the piled trash can next to my desk noticed the bottom side of a can of soda pop (coke) would make a perfect reflector for this project.



After cutting out the "reflector" off the bottom of the can and doing a bit of modification to it to mount the LED I placed the reflector in place of the old one and ran the wires to a 3v RCR123 Without any regulation here are my results. I've yet to finish the rest of the pucks but I'm pretty impressed with the results thus far. Pictures are below. Click on them for larger images.

 

[wooooooolazer]

Looks nice except for the placement of the led, led's emit light forward so the way you have it know it is only using the top half of the reflector, you should move it down lower so just the dome of it is inside the reflector.

...lazer... ;D ;D ;D


Like this....

 

[Kenom]

Yeah I know. I didn't have enough room below to mount the thing on another heatsink below it. I wasn't looking to spotlight the thing. I wanted flood. So the little bit of reflector it's actually hitting is working great. plus it acts as a heatsink as well. as you can see from the picture of it working it's putting out about the perfect light for a puck. Not overpowering and yet illuminates what's under it.

 

[nikokapo]

one day while looking at the piled trash can next to my desk noticed the bottom side of a can of soda pop (coke) would make a perfect reflector

this is why i love engineering.


cool project!!


i bought a dimmer for my 220v regular 60W fluorescent lamp and it keeps blowing up, i think we have an overload because the wiring is really badly done