Illuminated magnifier conversion
 

Hi Peeps. With the advent of Strips of white leds, I re visited the conversion of my illuminated magnifiers. The original illumination is by circular fluorescent tube, which... if the guard is removed, makes them ideal targets for the knob on the solder sucker. I had tried using white leds on a custom pcb, but it was too cumbersome and power hungry.
I recently saw reels of White daylight leds on Ebay, at a very reasonable price, and decided to give it another go. The leds come in a continuous strip, that can be cut to any length, providing they are cut on the obvious joins. In both my cases I needed 3 strips of varying lengths. To connect wires to the cut lengths, it is just a case of removing to polythene coating with a sharp knife and soldering wires to the bare pads marked + and -. In total the lamp now consumes 0.9A @ 12V thus barely 12W.
The light is more than adequate. The main problem I found was to use the self adhesive strip on the back of the leds... to be honest this is totally useless.. I used a combination of UHU and Hotmelt, hotmelt being the best option.
The power is supplied by a 12V DC 2A Walwart....... yes I know... using walwarts is not the best solution but Im not playing radio if I am using the magnifier.
I attach photo's to show the finished result... maybe NOT the tidiest job I have done, but it works and only I will see it.

Re: Illuminated magnifier conversion
 

It looks quite neat to me!

The flat that I rented earlier this year had a tall bookcase / shelving unit thing that had the RGB version of these LED strips stuck under the shelves to light them up, no idea why anyone would want random flashing colours on their shelves, so I set them as close to warm white as I could! The self adhesive on the back was rubbish on those too, damn things kept dropping off all the time, so I borrowed some superglue from work... They won't be dropping off now!

Regards,
Lloyd

Re: Illuminated magnifier conversion
 

Haa haa Lloyd...I'm no good with super glue..I would be more attached than the thing I was glueing.

Re: Illuminated magnifier conversion
 

Excellent! Wish I hadn't thrown out mine out now.

Re: Illuminated magnifier conversion
 

This happened to me a few weeks ago! I sat there for about five seconds before I worked out what had happened!

Re: Illuminated magnifier conversion
 

Did not the shower of glass give you a clue ?? Certainly takes you by surprise... I have now 2 Round tubes going "cheep"..

Re: Illuminated magnifier conversion
 

Wendy that is an excellent idea .
I too have one of those lights and so far the guard is in good condition but as you say when it gets broken the tube is very vulnerable .