magnetic led light

I just received mine ,only took 20 days from China! I'll be attaching it to my mini mill, it is small enough to look like it is a part of the mill albeit the cheapest part.
This LED light couldn't have been made any cheaper.
 
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I had eyed that exact light on ebay.

I have been a little unhappy with LED's for detail work. For some reason , they don't give the same detail that incandescent does. Both flashlights, and led bulbs in standard AC. I do use them above my tools, but I did notice that when I put in a regular incandescent, that I saw more detail. Not sure why.
Thus is possibly because white LED's are not full spectrum devices. White LED's are actually a fluorescent device, incorporating a phosphor much like conventional fluorescent lamps but where the excitation comes from a blue-violet led instead of a mercury vapor discharge.

LED's have a narrow emission in the far blue region of the spectrum but the human eye is not very sensitive at that wavelength. They have relatively low emission in the cyan and red areas of the spectrum. In contrast an incandescent lamp has

The human eye is most sensitive at 540 nm but as I recall, details are best observed closer to the blue end of the spectrum at the region of the spectrum where emissions are lowest.

I would suggest looking for warm white LED's rather than the cool white or neutral white for a more balanced spectrum. Here is a comparison of the different types of white LED's, courtesy of Cree.
LED Spectrum.JPG
 
Also I believe the LED lamp manufacturers just use a full wave rectifier but little or no filtering caps so there is a little flicker at 120 hertz.
When you flick your eyes back and forth it's subtly annoying- I find it tires my eyes, more so than the "hole" in the spectrum. Some car tail lights are like that too.
MS
ps Maybe some phosphor-based LEDs have more persistence than others? Not a spec you're gonna find on the box. LOL
 
Also I believe the LED lamp manufacturers just use a full wave rectifier but little or no filtering caps so there is a little flicker at 120 hertz.
When you flick your eyes back and forth it's subtly annoying- I find it tires my eyes, more so than the "hole" in the spectrum. Some car tail lights are like that too.
MS
ps Maybe some phosphor-based LEDs have more persistence than others? Not a spec you're gonna find on the box. LOL

I see the flickering outside when it's foggy or raining. The droplets are strobe stopped. So you can tell it's on/off/on/off.
 
Those are cool but I prefer "halo eye" led rings mounted on the quill of my RF30. Here's some quick pics off the net of a similar setup. Mines much cleaner as I just used dual sides tape to stick it to the quill. I like it because there's no shadows.image.jpegt

image.jpeg
 
I had eyed that exact light on ebay.

I have been a little unhappy with LED's for detail work. For some reason , they don't give the same detail that incandescent does.

There's a good reason for that: like fluorescents, diffuse illumination from a panel of LEDs doesn't cast a sharp shadow. Single-point
lighting, lika a halogen desk lamp, is better for textures and details because the shadow line gives good contrast. Spot lighting
from a distance is the ideal situation; maybe try an old slide projector focused on the work surface.

Last eclipse, when the sun was narrowed to a sliver, the apparent texture of a grass lawn was just surreal: it looked like a Photoshop
sharpening filter was applied.
 
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