best artificial light for showing swirls and such

[ZoranC]

LED Halogen By Brinkmann is all there is. Not a number in sight.

Thanks! I'll try anyway.

 

[kyotousa]

I got mine at Tuesday mornings for $14.99. Some people reported finding them at Big Lots for few dollars less.

14.99 at walmart?

 

[ZoranC]

14.99 at walmart?

No, 14.99 at Tuesday Mornings (store chain name).

 

[Flish]

Agree...nothing beats natural light. In the shop you've gotta use multiple sources of light.

This one really is worth the dreaded search as we've discussed it in depth a few times. Fluorescent is great for general illumination, but pretty awful for spotting marring (somebody whose opinion I respect says it works fairly well on white paint though).



Halogens are OK...but nothing super; I have a pair of them, 1,000W and 1,2000 w IIRC, and yeah I use them for general illumination when polishing, but not for final inspections.



After hearing so much about xenons here, I played around with my painter's xenon and to be brutally honest I wasn't too impressed by it- I could just *barely* see some (admitedly very light) marring that I *know* is there. The same marring is *very* obvious in my shop, where I have high-wattage incandecents for jobs like that. Xenons might be better than halogens, hard to say, but IMO they're not the last word on the subject.



Best IMO is incandescent in an otherwise dark room. Zero surprises, even on silver. But you gotta really work with different viewing and illumination angles to get everything just right. I get things looking great under halogens, then turn off everything and get out the incandescent trouble light to see what still needs work.

 

[Accumulator]

Agree...nothing beats natural light. In the shop you've gotta use multiple sources of light.

But interestingly enough, stuff that I can't see in sunlight *is* visible if I get the shop lighting right :nixweiss This stuff isn't as simple as one might expect :think:

 

[jasonmac]

But interestingly enough, stuff that I can't see in sunlight *is* visible if I get the shop lighting right :nixweiss This stuff isn't as simple as one might expect :think:

I've found the same thing, it's different angles with different brightnesses that can unhide things you didn't see elsewhere.

 

[swirl mark]

I've found the same thing, it's different angles with different brightnesses that can unhide things you didn't see elsewhere.

quite true... this has been my problem for years.. just when you think you have it right, different lighting and angles makes things show that didn't before..