I have been using a fantastic desk lamp in my office for many years. The fixture and arm are high quality, and the light comes from two CF tubes drawing 13W each. Now that the Q5 Crees are all the rage, I figured it was time to move to LEDs. I originally chose 5x Q5 Cree, and 1x Lux3 red to warm it up. But I don't think the red is going to remain!
Here is an overview of the whole mess, half way through the
project. I'm holding the stuff that I ripped out.
The driver is two bFlex boards arranged so that one is a slave,
and both are controlled by one button. Each supports three emitters.
The whole thing is powered by a regulated 18V, 825mA wart.
I lopped the 120V plug off the lamp cord, and attached a power connector.
Makes it easier to thread the cord through the holes in the back of my desk
for a clean install.
Here are the six emitters AA'd to the metal reflector. The
pen marks were for locating. Originally I was going to use the chrome grill
you see under the reflector - and I wanted to make sure the emitters were
centered in the grill holes.
I poked holes through the reflector for a cleaner install.
Now the double bFlex driver is wrapped up and insulated, and
here is the first test fire. This is at 350mA.
By dimming all the way down to 15mA, a better picture can be
taken!
Into the lamp fixture (bFlex sandwich is hidden in the black
shelf).
I put the grill on, and was happy to see that I had located
the emitters well. The bad news is that the grille gave me TERRIBLE shadow
lines, so I didn't use it in the end.
The quality of light is actually very good with the one red
to warm it up.
...unless you don't like crazy shadows like this. Since the
light is used on my desk, this multi-shadow stuff is a real pain. Here is
a video on the multi-image and multi-color
shadow situation.
The main power switch is the centered one (the white you see
is invisible without the flash - you are seeing down into the fixture with
the unnatural light). The button on the side is the control for the driver
that I added.
As the thing stands now. You can see how I hid the guts with
some gaffer's tape at the back. Looks great if you don't take a flash picture
of it!
