Milling Machine Ring Light For 85mm Quill's (Warco GH18) by Gazz292

Last crawled date: 3 years ago

This is a mount to hold a 'ring light' on a milling machine with an 85mm quill.
The 'ring light' is a 100 mm "Angel Eye" LED ring, sold for about £8 on ebay... make sure you get a white one, and not one with that tacky blue tinge boy racers love.
I bought a single 100mm one of these :https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/254587768837
The 100mm led ring has an 88mm hole in it, just right for an 85mm quill to pass through, and is 'secured' by 3 tabs on it's back that clip into this mount.
There's 2 parts, and 4 .stl files to choose from,
The main part is the "Mill Ring Light Mount" this fixes to the quill and allows the angel eye to just clip in place.
The "Converter Holder" is a clip that holds the little plastic 'jelly bean' that is half way along the angel eyes power cable, there's a buck/boost converter in it, as the angel eye is sold for fitting into car headlights, so has to handle 10 to 18 volts from a cars alternator (some are rated for 24 volts too) I chose to power it from a 1 amp 12 volt DC psu (aka wall wart, power brick) The led right pulls ~300 milliamps.
The ring light mounts:
There's 2 versions, The "Mill Ring Light Mount Bottom Screw.stl" has 2 vertical bolt holes, to allow you to drill and tap the cast iron quill ring, and use M3 x 16 allen bolts to fix it on (my photo shows an earlier version with 4 holes... but i only used 2 of them, as that's more than enough for this and less likely to interfere with the clamping part it's secured to)
The "Mill Ring Light Mount Side Screw.stl" has 3 horizontal M6x1 threads in it, this allows you to use M6 bolts, or ideally set screws, which allows the mount to grip the quill, thus no need to drill any holes in the mill parts.
Please not, that version is untested as i prefer to hard mount things, but i know not everyone wants to drill holes in their mill so i made this version.... it's the same dimensions as the one i've fitted, just the mounting holes are in different locations.
The 2 other parts are different holders for the 'jelly bean' converter box.
The "Mill Ring Light Converter Holder Warco GH18 Mount.stl" is for this particular mill (and other small gear head mills that this is a clone of... this is NOT an RF-45 clone, it's smaller than that, it's also known as the Prescription Matthews 727, Grizzly G0761 and so on)
There's a small angled 'wall' under the rear half of the mill head, and this holder allows you to just clip the jelly bean converter on that 'wall'
The GH18 mill has 75mm quill travel, and the cable length from the jelly bean to the led pcb is about 85mm, so this worked out just right, the jelly bean held horizontal also ensures the cable loops nicely and doesn't get caught on the clamp of the quill ring as you lower the quill.
The "Mill Ring Light Converter Holder Flat Mount.stl" has a flat mount that you can stick / drill and fit anywhere you want on your own mill.
You may have to extend the wire between the jelly bean and the led pcb tho, if you do, try to use silicone wire (as is used originally) as that stuff is extra flexible, just right for wires that will be moving up and down every time you move the quill position.
You can choose to just leave the jelly bean dangling if you wish, cable tie it to another wire on the mill or what ever works for you, you can see i used some of that finger trap cable braid stuff just to hide the pink and white wires.
I chose to feed the wire for the ring light up the cable conduit from the mill head to the switch / electrics box.
It's tight in that thar conduit, so i had to feed some stiff wire from the electrics box to the mill head, then i soldered the 2 wires from the jelly bean to the stiff wire (that i extended and fitted a plug and socket to earlier) and pulled it through.
The stock wire in that conduit is for the 'safety switch' on that clear cover guard thing that everyone removes, and the tapping auto reverse micro switches, so i had 2 free wires that used to be for the safety switch already between the mill head and electrics box i could have repurposed... dang you hindsight)
I then fitted a 1 amp 12 volt DC psu in the electrics box.... my mill is the 3 phase motor with inverter version (the latest WARCO GH18) so that big yellow box is stuffed full of nothing... just the switches on the front panel and the wires out the conduits at the back.
On the single phase motor models there's contactors and timers in there for the auto tapping function... if fitted.
I wired the 12 volt psu's mains connection to the main switch of the mill, this is after the main fuse so it's protected by that, and it means the ring light turns on and off with the main mill power button.