Gooseneck lamps shed light on machine tools

The latest development from Waldmann Lighting combines the advantages of LED technology with a gooseneck mount for precise and powerful machine tool illumination.

The latest development from Waldmann Lighting combines the advantages of LED technology with a gooseneck mount for precise and powerful machine tool illumination.

Waldmann's LED lights are becoming increasingly popular with machine tool manufacturers, who are supplying them factory fitted on a wide variety of equipment, including lathes, machining centres, drills and EDM systems.

Compared with alternatives such as halogen spotlights, Waldman's LED technology provides a compact and powerful light source that emits no heat, can withstand constant flushing with coolant, is not vulnerable to damage from chip impacts and gives up to 50kh of maintenance-free service life.

The unit's small size and rugged design mean that it can be mounted right next to the workpiece - the addition of a goose neck mounting makes it even easier to provide powerful illumination exactly where it is needed for safe and error-free tool and workpiece setting The new lights are available in two variants - one where the LED light is permanently fixed onto the gooseneck, and one where the light is mounted in a removable magnetic head.

German machine tool manufacturer, DMG fits the fixed version of the light on its Lasertec 80 power drill and Lasertec 80 fine cutting machines.

The Waldmann gooseneck LED has replaced a system where light from a halogen lamp was directed onto the work through a fibre optic assembly.

This had two disadvantages compared with the Waldmann system - the fibre optic unit was very expensive and the halogen lamp had to be replaced every 2000 hours.

Charmilles has adopted the version with the removable head for its Robofil 2050 TW and 6050 TW EDM machines - where it has proved particularly useful for setup and maintenance operations offering the benefits of a hand light and a machine light in one unit.

The lights replace gooseneck halogen lamps that only had a 2kh life and ran very hot, making them a potential danger to the operator and difficult to adjust.

As with all Waldmann machine lights, the new units meets and exceed the requirements of the European Machinery Directive on machine lighting as set out in EN1837.

They deliver at least 500 lux in the working area with no glare, shadowing or stroboscopic effect.

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