Task lighting is a passion, so that means gathering my share of collected old-timer fixtures that are iconic, or representations of a product that is familiar and comfortable. In this case it is the Dazor desk lamp. I have these in drafting board mount, and have made on floor lamp from a similar foundation. I don’t use fluorescent tubes in any of them, and for the most part use only the base and arms, with my own task lighting head attached.
This particular project involves combining task lighting plus the ability to cure light cure resins, coatings, fiberglass materials, and SLA printed parts. The combination is not as odd as it sounds. For model building, whether it be a hobby boat or architectural model, or SLA printed part, gluing parts together, or laying on a coating of clear on a finished part, there is a need for high visibility task lighting to do detail work. By using UV cure resins and coatings, there is no need to rush.
The white light in this task lamp produces very little blue light, 300-600 Fc of 3000K 93 CRI white light from two sources to reduce shadowing. Then, when the time is just right, the white light is switched to light cure, delivering 20mW/cm² of 405nm UV cure light, perfect for most adhesives, SLA resins, clear UV coating, and UV cure resins. The advantages of UV curing are many. First, no pot life of resins, so very little waste. Second is lower odor than catalyzed materials. Third, you can work the materials for as long as you wish without worrying about them hardening, then, when ready, expose it to the cure light. You can even stop the cure process in process to make small adjustments or correct flaws, then restart the cure process by re-starting the light exposure.
To attain the high levels of both working white light as well as blue cure light, this fixture needed considerable modifications. The lighting head has a heat sink bar that the LEDs are mounted to, for dissipation of the 59 Watts of UV light (9W of UV radiant power), and the 31 Watts of white task lighting. On the rear of this heat sink bar are two small fans (12VDC) to keep it all cool. This added to the weight of the head, which the arm spring was not designed to hold up, so the arm mechanism required upgrading, and the spring mechanism tension increased to hold the head and arm at any height or angle desired.
The two switches on the head provide power on, which includes the fans. The second switch is the mode switch, selecting between blue-off-white. The center off position allows the fans to run and cool the head at the end of a long cure cycle, which can be necessary for some parts that are either very thick, or require rotation during the cure cycle.
This conversion delivers an attractive desk/work light for creating, finishing, and fine tuning parts that are completed using UV cure products.
