Back when many things were made here in the States, so were the tools we used. Today machinist/hobbiests and small custom shops have come to revere some of the most iconic of these tools. In lathes, South Bend holds a special place in history (the company has longs since died and become a brand for import stuff). These machines occupied machine shops, went to war, and schools. The one in this picture is a 10″ x 42″ tool room lathe. It has all the good stuff of the day, from taper attachment to driven cross slide. For me, restoring this lathe and putting it to service in our prototype shop is like restoring a classic car. There is a great deal of timelessness about this tool, and they are as tough as they come. This particular model was purchased in the 1960’s, and was worked hard for its entire life. I rebuilt it in 2009, and have just updated the task light with the design you see here.
LEDs with high performance DC drivers make excellent machine task lights. With no flicker, there is no strobe effect, and with LEDs not minding a little vibration and getting banged around a little, the issues of burned out incandescent lamps is ended. CFL retrofit lamps in this application are awful. They take too long to warm up, most flicker when lighting moving objects, and the beam intensity is miserable. Halogen is not a lot better than incandescent, and is hot.
The rework essentially replaced everything on the work light except the flexible stem and mount to the lather bed. I used a Molex/Bridgelux Helieon module and a 1A driver mounted at the base. The replaceable module allows me to change the light distribution by snapping in different modules. For example, when doing long taper work, a wider overall light pattern is great. But when working on small detail work, a spot distribution is better. With a couple modules in the drawer, this is just a quick swap.
More images of this can be found at Lumenique 52 in 52 – Design 49
