hey guys it's Adam from Testim and I recently bought a beautiful all-metal god-killer sword
from Wonder Woman this is something I've been waiting for for a while and it's lovely but
it's gonna require it's got a cast zinc handle and the casting is just slightly misaligned so
it's gonna take me a bunch of time to file it but that's not today's one day build nope I've
been obsessed lightly with watching videos of master engravers doing their business on doing
their business plying their trade on things like watch bands will link to it below this video but
it highlighted for me a couple things one I had no idea how much careful clothes work you could do
with chisels and files but two I have never been working with enough light and last week I decided
to remedy that and that is today's one-day build it is making one of these lights to be able to
work with enough light let's get started alright I'm gonna start by running through the features
of why this lamp is really really useful for the kind of work that I do one it is very positionable
way out to the end of its I know it sort of settles but it's way positionable it's dimmable
so I can adjust the amount of light it is also adjustable for color timing wood this is the thing
over the past few years with the advent of do DIY filmmaking there's a lot of companies now making
these excuse me digital light panels of adjustable color temperature and adjustable brightness and
they've gotten cheaper and cheaper and cheaper this kind of panel was literally like hundreds of
dollars a few years ago and now it's like thirty dollars so this lamp has changed my life here in
the shop and we're gonna build one today and it's just with the parts on this table and let me run
you through them the soul of this lamp is this stuff this is called lock line LOC dash line and
it is actually a waterproof hose and it's used for things like delivering coolant in CNC machines you
have seen it in camera stores making the legs of adjustable in gripple tripods and monopods there
are iPhone holders that use these on the end of a clamp and that's how I got this idea this is
specifically 3/4 inch lock line and 36 inches of it costs about 30 bucks then there's a 3/4 lock
line to three-quarter inch NPT threading there is a 3/4 inch lock line wide flange thingamabob
then there is a power supply this is just a 12-volt power supply some aluminum armature
wire I'll explain that stuff in the mitt and the actual panel light itself look if you go on Amazon
there are dozens of different versions of this of this type of panel these panels are specifically
made to receive a battery like a camera battery so you can keep it powered for long periods of
time we're going to add actual plug to it so that we can run the power to the inside of the locked
line and like I said we will include links to each of these parts but there are also other versions
of each of these parts so you could find them cheaper by all means go as for mounting to the
table I made this a few days ago this is just a bit of Delrin with the port for the three-quarter
inch NPT tapped out and then four holes to screw it down to my workbench but you can just as easily
make a holder for this you could buy a female of this 3/4 inch NPT and weld it to a c-clamp so you
can clamp it to any table there's like a million ways to solve that problem all right I'm going
to start by laying out the pieces as I need them so we start with the panel that's going to need a
plug I actually pulled this off of an old power supply I had but you can actually you can order
these from Amazon that's a straight forward DC plug I'm gonna wire that down to my power
supply this panel comes with a a kind of a little Universal mount that allows some adjustability and
I used that it is actually quite useful so we're gonna use that so there's that to that to that to
that to that to that and this power supply height I ran a small power supply to this and it wasn't
enough amperage to power this so I went overboard and I bought a powerful 12 volt 8 amp transformer
you don't have to get one this powerful but I don't know how low mean maybe 2 amps is what
you want maybe 1 amp I went overboard because that's what I do but it's got a car charger on
the end of it and we'll have to remove that and then there's its plug oh and the armature wire
the armature wire is a key part of this build if you'll notice this supports itself all the
way out and while loc-line is in fact quite stiff it's not that stiff it can't quite do that so I
helped the lock line by adding some armature wire from here up to about here and in fact there's a
single piece here that comes down and bends over and comes back up to here so it's like
folded over itself so I get even a little bit more strength down here than up here but that's what it
took to be able to make it support itself across the whole table and it's a feature I put it's a
feature I particularly love so armature wire this is quarter-inch armature wire you can get this at
the art store it is effectively soft aluminum which just means I believe straight an alloy
aluminum and it's not that expensive I think the whole cost for this build is just around a hundred
and twenty bucks what I spent on it and again you may be able to find cheaper parts cheaper
panels cheaper pieces by all means go and make it out of those because you don't have to spend that
much necessarily okay so if this comes oh that's nice so this wire can go all the way through my
piece before it gets to the power supply so I'm gonna cut this oh here's a tip if you have a plug
with a bit that you don't want on it don't cut it here the reason is is if you cut it here you'll
never be able to use this always give yourself an extra few inches and now should I ever need this
it's actually useful to me because I can strip these wires and solder them to something else
there's things first with the soldering ah write a note here most electronics give you the handy
guide of telling you which part the centre or the outside of the of the DC plug that goes into
it is positive or negative and this one says quite clearly that the centre is positive and
the outside is negative so we need to determine which of these two wires is positive and we do
that but this guy a continuity tester I set my multimeter to do sound and when these two wires
have continuity with each other they beep so I put one in the middle and then I touch these two
wires until I get a beep there we go that is my positive that's not that's my positive that's not
there we go so that's the positive I attach the positive to the positive and the negative negative
hmm I am a recent convert to the dremel butane powered soldering iron but it's a nice robust
little machine so now that you have the solder I'm going to put on the heat shrink usually a
butane soldering iron will have a hole up here near the tip that's your heat shrink heating
tip and I'll bring that underneath to gently shrink that heat shrink around the solder joint
okay so now I've got the individual wires soldered I want to actually
add some protection on top of that so I'm gonna seal all those inside
of this big piece of heat shrink we can use a torch for this sort of thing
okay there that is the sum total of the electronic circuitry necessary for this guy what do I need
now now I need the armature wire going from from the middle back and back up just a little bit
okay I didn't fully list out all of the pieces and parts there's one more bit of extra support
that this lamp needs in addition to the lock line and the armature wire and that is a short
length of steel rod it's literally only about six inches long but it allows this to stay effectively
upright and that turns out to be important to its operations so by the way if you want to work with
mild steel and even hardened steel just get a pair of bolt cutters you don't even need a bandsaw for
this stuff you can clip it all day long in the beginning of my career as a welder courier in
the beginning of my work as an itinerant freelance welder I made store fixtures for a store in Hayes
Valley here in San Francisco I made 300 hangers and six clothing racks basically using only a
pair of bolt cutters okay now it's time to make the mount between the the little GoPro type mount
for the screen and the lock line and here's what I did I used a universal bit to attach to drill
a hole this diameter through the lock line flames to be able to mount this to the plastic as close
as I can to the to the bottom where the plastic is the strongest so it's going to be right around
there we go that's the right one okay then I want to cut away a bunch of this
stuff so this by the way is a Sharpie paint marker and they're really nice so
I'm going to cut away that and then I'm going to cut away the backside of this
yeah okay so now it doesn't it doesn't quite it's kind of wedged up in there which is exactly what
I want I want a little bit of pressure on this guy this is a this the other end of this screen
has a camera flash hot shoe mount on it for mounting on your camera shoot obviously but
we're going to use that to just help us secure this guy down that drop the screw back in okay
so I now have hard mounted the the mount for the screen on the end of the lock line flange
female and this is pretty much ready to go your results may vary you may find a better
way to attach these two things together that's totally fine there's no right way to do this
but now I need to fish this guy all the way through this tube and then up through here
so it can plug into the back of the monitor how am I gonna do that with some washers and string
here's the length of string here are some washers I just need a little bit of weight
is all I need so I'm just gonna take a few of these and thread the string through the
washers tie a dumb little square not because I'm lazy this morning and then there we go
now I'm all the way through so I can cut this and put these washers back where they belong
then I'm going to tie this guy pulling it through ready there we go come on baby there we are look
at that we're all the way fabulous this is now the top hey there that's where this comes up and
through ah that's what it takes to connect lock line to itself then I did I did I screwed this
up okay I got my order of operations mixed up a little bit I got to undo that because I forgot
that this thing mounts through a base and through a bit of threaded there and now it goes through
that so I got to break out the string again now back through here now we've got to attach that guy
to that which is about doing a little bit of this action and then I need to attach this to that and
I tap this but it still may require a wrench to get it all the way down like I said I've machined
a piece of Delrin to receive this so I can bolt it to my table but you can just as easily use a
female 3/4 inch npt steel pipe fitting and weld it to a steel clamp that would take about all of
five minutes you could just tap this right into your table if you so chose there's a lot of ways
to skin this have a morbid expression okay we are almost there this is like the fastest one
day build we've ever done so I'm gonna plug this in I'm going to plug it into some house
power and we plug it in and here's the moment of truth we turn it on hey I haven't plugged
it's all the way in all right here let's try that again the moment of truth hey that's a little bit
cold we're gonna change the color temperature down to 42 40 40 200 oh that's really nice and
we can change the dimness and the brightness and do there's one less step right I forgot about the
armature wire because here's the thing without the armature wire if I bent this here it would
fall it would not support its own weight so the armature wire is the next stage in this so the
armature wire goes in like this but I don't want this sharp cut and to cut through my wire so I'm
gonna soften it on my belts in it now I need its end to be bent nice and tight so I do this
okay
now that should spread up quite nicely
you can aid and abet the installation of the armature wire by straightening out your lock
line yeah yeah nicely that does that great and then you add in a steel pipe just like that we
can mount this right into our table like that yeah that's what we're gonna do and there you
go that was pretty straightforward and you'll see it supports itself all the way out at the
end you can adjust the color temperatures you can get your light literally wherever
you need it to be working on stuff I I'm kind of surprised at myself how long I have worked
on meticulous things really close up and I have not yet worked with enough light but
that changes now if you come up with your own solution to this and it's slightly different
this I would love to see pictures in the comments that would be awesome
let's all work towards a world with better lighting