Sub £20 Home Made lights (luxeon K2)
My pet light project sheds some weight and gets new looks.
Following on from my original post, where I built inexpensive lights from copper pipe, I've tweaked my design, used a K2 LED and made the lights lighter and cheaper.
Using the same basic principles described below I have refined some of the materials and also come up with a bomb and vibration proof (not to mention) dead simple bracket.
I have substituted the star fangled nut (used as a heat sink) for a lighter disc of copper that fits tightly down the tube thus conducting most of the Luxeon K2 LEDs heat to the exterior. This heat sink has two little holes drilled in it to allow the wires to pass from the jack at the rear to the Luxeon K2 emitter.
The K2 emitter is mounted to the heat sink with heat sink compound and this is pushed snugly against the lens and lenses diffuser. This is, as before, held into the tube by the handy fact that pipe cutters crimp the tube slightly.
The rear of my new lights has gone carbon.
With a hole saw (drill bit) I cut the rear discs from a sheet of carbon fibre, bought as a scrap of Ebay. The void from the hole saws central drill bit allows a chassis fit phono connector to attach securely.
The rear carbon plate is held in place with a smidge of epoxy and a carbon headset spacer to finish.
The bracket is as simple as you can get, I found a bar mounted bottle cage and used the cast alloy bracket from that. As you can see in the picture I simply used bent steel to hold the lights and this attached to the bracket with one allen key bolt.
If you need any more info please mail me and I'll see what I can do. I'm not a boffin so I'm not good with too much technical stuff, I like to keep things as simple as possible - like me!
Sub £40 Home Made lights
Simple-Easy-Cheap!
I'm well chuffed with the simplicity of these. If I was making these again I would make a single light as linking the wires through from one lamp into the other required a fiddly conversion of a hollow bolt from a Shimano down tube stop.
Please excuse the bars I've had them for years!
To make them: (for under £40 including battery)Solder thin 10cm long wires to you + - on your K2 stars. Take a 50mm bit of 28mm copper pipe. cut a section with pipe cutter at one end and hacksaw the other. About 10mm from the hacksaw end drill a hole to take a phono plug and a hole to bolt down onto a clamp(I used a cateye bracket which has a useful nut and bolt ready for action.)
Simple!
I built a double version which was a little more tricky and a little more ugly as it isn't nicely symmetrical. But it is bright!
I also found out that a phono socket sits neatly into the area on an aheadset cap where the bolt head sits. If you wanted to epoxy the cap in then you can run your cable out the back- which looks well smart and not unlike an exposure light (with a little imagination).
How cheap were the parts?...Luxeon K2 (130 Lumen) £4.93
Spot base lens for K2 £1.31
Lux drive buck puck £10.93. (I did try a series of resistors last year and they really were cack!)
Phono plug (one for the battery pack too!) £0.72. but for the extra 50p I'd get gold plated next time!
28mm copper tube = £peanuts. I bought a short length of an ebay store for £1.55!
8V Lithium Ion camcorder battery - another ebay wonder at £12 inc postage from China but it did come with a Chinese plug that wouldn't fit my adaptor until I took a hacksaw to the adaptor
So about £30 for a single light and about £35 for a twin.
I've not included the starnuts or caps as I had them lying about. Carbon top caps (which I'll be getting later cost about £6 and SFNs about £2). The phono cable was also surplus and I'll be making one with a right angled bracket for the lights end of things soon.
More lights links here.
