Bridgeport 360 degree LED Spindle Light Build

I got tired of not being able to see very well while using my mill, so I decided to make an LED light that would illuminate all the way around the spindle. Thinking others might be interested in making their own, I decided I’d share what I did.
I started with a ring shaped LED array, that I bought from www.superbrightleds.com, which runs on 12V DC. It was the 120mm model in “natural white”, and cost me about $14.

Since my Bridgeport used to be an NC machine, and was converted to manual, it doesn’t have all the bits and pieces on the front of the head that a normal series I would have. That being the case, I designed the housing to bolt to a vacant boss on the front of the head. I’m sure mounting could be done a number of ways. This seemed to be the easiest for my application.

Here are my whiteboard prints.






Using a rotary table I milled out a housing from aluminum.







I then drilled and tapped 6 holes that will be used to hold the polycarbonate cover on. Well I broke a tap off in one of the holes, so I guess that makes it 5.
I also drilled and tapped two holes for the mount.

I milled the cover out of 0.100” Polycarbonate using the rotary table (Drill the 6 holes first). One thing I learned while doing this, is that the endmill will want to lift the PC sheet up while milling, so hold it down well.

I didn’t take pictures of how I made the mount, but it is basically some 0.060” Steel plate welded to a stepped steel boss that has a tapped hole in the center.

Continued---

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