homemade lamp

[3jackwhite3]

if i were to make a homemade lamp would an ordinary dimmer swith that is used in house lighting work to dim the lamp?

[John_R]

Do you mean a lamp for household use etc? If your lamp uses a normal tungsten bulb, off a wattage within the rating of the dimmer then yes it would. You would need to put a back-box on the dimmer or put it into a housing of some sort.

 

You can buy inline dimmers though, that have a 13A plug on a bit of flex, and a socket outlet, and that would look a lot neater.

 

If you mean a lamp for shooting, then no, none of the above applies.

Edited July 10, 2009 by john_r

[3jackwhite3]

sorry should of been more clear i wanted to make a lamp for hunting

[skinny]

i dont think so, house hold dimmer switches are AC ones from a car are DC they will work, might blow up though if the current is too strong.

[Hunter_zero]

The problem you have is that in line "dimmer" switches are little more than variable resistors. If you draw too much current then you'll burn out the resistor and on top of that the resistor will use up a lot of power and thus shorten the working time span of your lamping set up.

To get around this you need to use a voltage regulator circuit, something like this : http://www.maplin.co.uk/Module.aspx?ModuleNo=30310 but you would need to up grade the voltage regulator (just ask for a regulator that can handle the current draw from your lamp. It's a three pin IC and is easy to swap).

Mount it in a box and you have a lamp dimmer or a magnet speed controller which uses little or no current and will not greatly reduce the effect life of your batteries.

 

John