Ottlite Conversion: Mini-Lathe LED Lighting

An ancient Ottlite fluorescent floor lamp (one of a pair bought during a closeout sale at a minute fraction of their absurd sticker price) finally aged out. Pondering what to do with the carcass led to this discovery:

Half of a Samsung (!) LED panel (presumably sheared by the surplus supplier) fit so perfectly in place of the fluorescent tube that I just had to make it happen.

The original fluorescent ballast mounted in the smaller compartment:

I like the air-cooled triac sticking off the side of the PCB.

The lamp originally mounted parallel to the flex arm, but I wanted it at a right angle, so the molded bracket had to go:

Which required a few minutes of manual jogging:

Some coordinate drilling on the Sherline converted a rectangle of aluminum sheet into a backing plate inside the base (visible through the original holes) to spread the stress over a larger area:

The new 24 V 1 A power supply mounts pretty much where the OEM ballast came from, although I had to hack out the molded screw bosses and perch the PCB atop four aluminum standoffs anchored in globs of high-temperature hot-melt glue:

You might think the white and black wires on the right are interchanged, because you’re not supposed to switch the neutral, but only if you also insist anybody cares about the colors of wires inside a molded cord. This one came from a nominally good-quality cord with an IEC connector now in the e-waste box: trust yet always always verify.

The LED panel sticks to the aluminum sheet with thermal tape and is clamped in place with a quartet of M2.5 standoffs:

I’ll eventually make a better cover than a strip of overhead projector film (remember overhead projectors?), as spattering the LEDs with cutting oil and random conductive swarf is Bad Practice™.

A little more cutting and drilling produced an angle bracket for the lathe backsplash panel:

Thing looks like it grew there, doesn’t it?

The end of the backsplash might need a 3D printed bracket to stabilize its right-angle bends and prevent wobbulation, although I’ll wait until that becomes a real problem before solving it.

The top of that stylin’ lamp shade tapers along its length and, unfortunately, appears directly in front of the MPCNC bench across the basement (out of sight at the top) as I stand at the lathe. Having the shade not align exactly parallel to the bench is more annoying than it really should be; perhaps I can get used to it after spending more time at the lathe.

I loves me some good LED lighting …