Replace Lamps with LEDs

Everybody is replacing the incandescent lamps that are installed with LEDs. They are brighter, rarely burn out, draw less current and there is a plethora of colors to choose from.

There is a problem though. LEDs focus their light to the tip. This causes our project to look a little funny at times. Too much light in one spot and not enough in the rest of the lit display.

There is a remedy though and it is extra simple!

Sand, file or do like I do and break out the Dremel with a sanding roll on it, and take the tip off. Make it flat instead of rounded. You'll want to stay away from the junction so leave just a little. Then lightly sand around the sides of the LED. Scuff it up real good.

The end result is shown in the following pictures.



After modification:



And here you can see the difference:

Pretty cool. Will have to try that out sometime.

LED's are great for lowering power consumption in old rigs. You can cut the light power consumption by 66% over those old wheat bulbs. There are different hues of lights as well that can give out warmer colors as well and provide the wheat bulb look to the view. Also with several watts of power cut out, many old radios will not shift and drift as much while warming up. There are many reasons to change to LED.

This filing job is a great idea for more light scatter. I am replacing many lights around the house with LED lighting. Some of it is stuff I am building on my own from light panels from ebay.

I will be using LED's to light up the interior of my Jupiter 2 Model that I just finished. Nice detail inside, but dark.

Some of the LED's are very bright. You may have to watch for the right ones.

For general indoor lighting I use mainly flourescent, eitther the regular straight tube or the CFL types.  Throughout much of this building however incandescent is still the primary light source, except for one lamp where we installed the first LED bulb. So far so good and my guess is that we'll start using more and more LED's.  I have a large box of CFL's that I got as part of a NYS rebate for installing a new energy efficient furnace a couple of years ago so I have no shortage of screw in type CFL's. Out in the garage I am using a combination of CFL, straight tube florescent, and a 175 watt mercury vapour.  

I recently bought a bright 9 LED music stand light which I use for my orchestra rehearsals and concerts. Matter of fact its extremely helpful as a lot of recital halls and concert venues are not always brightly lit, making it difficult to read music without one. . It's very bright and batteries last a long time in that lamp. When I am using it at home I have the option of plugging it into a USB power outlet on any computer or USB wall adapter.

I guess the LED's have made the old miniature incandescent pretty much obsolete in electronic gear. You'll still find them in use of course in most of the old boat anchors but even those can be converted for LED's as mentioned above.

Another place where LED's have revolutionized things is in the area of model aircraft lighting. navigation lights, headlamps, tail lights, and bright LED's can be used for rc model helicopter spotlights. Lot of guys are using them these days for night flying.

And yet another place they are appearing is in public spaces. Many local towns and cities, including my area, are switching over to bright LED street lamps. To get around the issue of narrow focus of individual LED's they use banks of LED's focused in a variety of directions so it gives a more diffuse and wider area of light. Plus less light is reflected to the sides or upward. They are also being used in train station lighting. At my local station virtually all the platform lights have been switched over to LED's.

No doubt. LED's have made vast inroads into almost every lighting application these days.