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Looking to upgrade lighting in my shop...have been using a hodgepodge of incandescent and fluorescent....

Incandescent seems 'warm' but inadequate for power tools or any detail hand work IMHO. Trying to stay away from fluorescent due to background buzzing, but it does put out good light.

Shop area is 11 x 16 enclosed room (minimal windows) and 12 x 14 garage area with skylights (minimal light)....'assume' no natural lighting.

1) Quantity of lighting? xxxx lumens/sq.ft.???
2) Type of light (incand., fluor, halogen, neon, other?)
3) Type of array ..task bulbs, overhead shop light, flood lights, etc.etc.

Thanks for your input.

Heck, maybe I'll post 'show us your stinkin' shop' when things are farther along .....or not due to continuous mess...

You better Doug my friend!!!

Filippo IIRC gave a great deal of thought to his shop lighting and ran a thread here too. I am not finding it at the moment but perhaps he will weigh-in and help.

As for me at my age, 53... I just can't seem to have enough light. And being the cheap ...... that I am I went for ceiling mounted 4' dual lamp florescent fixtures (6 of em) with Phillips cool white plus lamps - you know the cheap stuff from Lowes. Where ever I am I added task lighting too and I like the new fat-ass Al Gore light bulbs for a number of reasons. First they use very little energy and more recently the color has improved to not look so white. Most importantly to me though is that my basement shop is a bubble of sorts and as such it is difficult to get rid of heat. In the summer the newer bulbs don't generate as much heat and I kill the overheads and just use task lighting and this works for me.

Good luck and happy lighting!

Is there any chance to enhance your natural light? My priorities to lighting would be.....

1. Improve natural light
2. Incandescent AlGore lights
3. Florescent "natural light" bulbs

Task lighting is VERY important for my 51 year OLD ( ) eyes. Thankfully, there's been some technical improvements in those types recently.

I've moved from tube florescent to clip-ons and then more task lighting, which is often all I have on now. You can see all in first shot, but I found big lights heat up the shop too much. I even made an arm for one of the task lights for range to more work areas. (Note that in the daytime, you can't beat windows)

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Dave
Milton, ON

Doug, this is timely for me too. I asked John Hall earlier today in another thread, and this is what he wrote in response:

The T-8's with electronic ballast are cheap and quiet. Get 3500ºK lamps if you want warm light.

Buy the lamps in bulk packaging online. The price drops a lot.

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Howard Klepper
http://www.klepperguitars.com

When all else fails, clean the shop.

Thanks for the input guys.

Hesh, Ernie-sounds like 'Al Gore bulbs' for focused task lighting...maybe three or four. I have 2 overhead fluors. and need more.

Dave-LOTS of lumens on your bench....looks really adequate. type of bulbs???

James-I saw John's comment and didn't want to hijack that post.....thanks...and maybe he can expand on it....I need to re-read it.

Howard-T-8's and 3500K ...will research this-thanks. Bulk/on-line sounds like a plan. Also, it was a pleasure to meet you at Healdsburg this past season (and Brock and Lance).

At this point, looks like 6 tubular style arrays (t-8/3500k) and 3 or 4 task lights (w/Al Gore bulbs).......thanks again.

I've had the cheapo 4' florescents and just tried an 8' from lowes. It cost $55 but it takes the high output 110 watt bulbs and I'm going to get some more cause this thing beats those 4' all to heck.

Like Hesh I use the tube fluorescents with aluminum cans like in Daves pic with 120W equivalent florescences as spots when needed. I have 8 of the cans scattered around the shop, by the band saw, drill press, and mainly on my go bar decks.

Gentlemen:
Go with the full spectrum lighting, a human being is an animal developed over the millenia to operate at peak efficiency during daylight hours. The University of Chicago did massive studies a while ago that PROVED productivity goes up and sick days go down when the typical fluourescent lighting is changed to full spectrum (daylight lamps). As a 40 year veteran of the electrical field this is one thing I always did in my projects, the customers were sometimes a little leary of the perceived "blueish" color tint but soon forgot. As a plus, your house plants (shop plants ) will go nuts! Try it , you will never go back....... Mikey

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The Biggest Little City, Nevada
www.hammondguitars.com
I love building guitars!

I am with Mikey on this one.

I dumped my cheepo "cool white" T-8 tubes for 6500K daylight tubes.

Now I can see colors other than green and orange without walking to the window or going outside.

-jd

First, I have 57 year old eyes, plus I don't think they were all that good to begin with. My general lighting is with 4' florescent fixtures. The fixtures were from Lowes and not the cheaper ones. I have 24 fixtures, ceiling mounted (10' ht) in a 40 X 30' shop, daylight tubes @ 6500 lu. I use the 100 watt spiral cone florescents for task lighting. While this may be a bit over the top, my eyes are not improving and it is a safety issue. As a safety issue, it is also a compensation for leaving the blade guard off my table saw.

All florescents for the energy efficiency, of course.


Danny R. Little

Full spectrum (which should be called "fuller" spectrum) is about more than color temperature, although it's true that you get more of it going for a higher color temp. You don't have to go to 6500K, which is kind of blue (maybe what inspired Miles?). Look for the color rendition index on the bulbs--they all have it in their specs, and get the ones with a high index. I'm hazy on what goes into computing it, but it matters more than a claim to be full spectrum or daylight. Right now I'm running a 50-50 mix of 3500 and (iirc) 5000K, both with a high rendition index. Things look good.

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Howard Klepper
http://www.klepperguitars.com

When all else fails, clean the shop.

I mix florescent bulbs too, to improve the spectrum, although, being cheap, I use cool white (blueish), and warm white (orangish). As I recall, they renamed the warm white bulbs at some point over the years and they're called something else now.

It's a big improvement over 100% cool whites.

I've just recently converted my entire shop to the 4' T-8 fixtures with electronic ballasts. Love the peace and quiet.... I tried all the bulbs I could find, and settled on 5000k for the color temp. Most natural for me. Natural light for you depends on where you live and the time of year; more than half the year my natural light is reflected off of snow, and the rest of the year it reflects off the lake, so it's a very bright light. SoCal would be a warmer light.

I've cut my lighting power draw a little more than half with these lights, also. I was replacing dual 60 watt 8' fixtures in one section of the shop, early-on, with the 4' units, and expected to have to add a 4' unit to each to make up for the loss, as money permitted. But hello! I gained light! Honest. I ended up replacing each 8' fixture with the 4' units and gained light. And, best part is that I sold the 8' fixtures on a local Craig's list kind of place for more than the new lights cost me! In the end, all it cost me was my time. Best move I've made in a long, long time. Can't say enough good thing for these T-8 lights; amazing. Dead quiet, bright as all get up, and only 32 watts per tube. For sure, once you settle on the lighting color, buy a bulk case, and toss the others, as you don't want to mix and match colors in the room. Plays tricks with your eyes, and also your camera, which will forever seek to find the right white balance, and if you set it manually, you will have to set it for every part of the shop manually. Ugh... And they do run cool, Hesh, both the tube and the ballast.

Watch the sales at Home Depot; they cut them down every now and again.... I was getting mine at around $14 each, and selling the 8 footers for $50 each

I agree with Howard & Mario. The T-8s are far better than the old fluorescents. Use much less power & provide cleaner light without the buzz & hum. And they start right up without complaint on a cold morning.
I've been converting to T-8 as I can afford it. The oldest has now been running all day every day for about three years. No sign of the light fading & even the oldest have not started going black on the ends yet.
I actually had to remove several tubes 'cause the shop was too bright in some spots.
I'm sold!

That's not technically accurate. Mixing tubes just broadens the spectrum. Light is cumulative, so if you have X red of a specific wavelength and increase it by Y, you have Z red, not separate X and Y reds of the same wavelength.

So if one tube is deficient of a portion of the spectrum, mixing it with another tube that compliments that portion will only broaden the spectrum, not play tricks with your eyes. Quite the opposite, assuming that the resultant light spectrum more closely approximates natural light.

Although, if you have one portion of your shop lit with one color and another portion in a different color, that might not be too swell, but I'm referring to tubes in close proximity. I put two different colors side by side in the same fixture.

And the broader your light spectrum is, (and the more it resembles a natural light spectrum), the better your camera will perform. It doesn't know what kind of tubes you have in your fixtures unless you tell it, nor if they're mixed, it only gauges the photons that are hitting the CCD. Also, the "florescent" setting on cameras is designed for both warm-white and cool-white tubes, (not the 5000k)---but then, the better your light spectrum is the less likely this setting is even necessary.

I'm not saying that mixing warm and cool white is superior to the 5000k tubes, I don't think I've compared them, but unless the 5000k spectrum is perfect it might still be beneficial to mix them with something else, keeping in mind that natural light isn't uniform throughout the spectrum, meaning that if the 5000k does closely approximate natural light, adding more blue will probably make it less natural.

Around the house it might not be esthetically pleasing to mix tubes in the same fixture, but that's a secondary concern in a shop.

They replaced the metal halide bulbs in the gym at my school last year with florescent T5 bulbs. The gym teacher loves them. I think aquarium guys are using them now and they are very uptight about their light. No idea if they're appropriate for low ceiling close quarters work.

And several years ago, there was a study that showed kids with natural light in the classrooms (windows and skylights, not fancy bulbs) did dramatically better on standardized math tests. Something like 25% points higher if my memory's any good. Last I checked, it had not been replicated.

Mike

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Mike Lindstrom

From my youth, I had been used to flourescent fixtures that lasted "forever". I bought several of the cheap 48" ones a few years ago and found that many burned out within a year or so. Now when they go, I replace them with some more espensive ones, but I don't know yet if they will last. Whatever you buy, keep the receipts for replacement. Even if you do not keep the receipts, if they burn out early, try contacting the factory web site or toll free phone. I have had a number of appliances replaced free even without the receipt--for example, a fan that was about three years old.

Curtis, when you use the same temp color for the entire shop, no matter what color you used, you can set and store a manual white balance into your camera and then shoot anywhere in the shop and have the correct WB. Otherwise, you pretty well have to use auto WB if you have different temps everywhere, and it will seek. Been there, cursed(loudly) at that.

And I also explained that was is natural light for me won't be natural light in SoCal(Howard's shop, for example), and at different times of year. Choose a light color that works for your eyes, and stick with it.

Fluorescent lights don't last forever. They have roughly double the li8fe of a incandescent bulb, at best. What they don't do is burn out like a incandescent, but instead, begin to get dimmer. Less light, same power draw equals wasted energy and poor lighting to boot. They do it slowly enough that we don't notice until one day, we think: "dang, going blind am I, or what!?". If you have a fluo. tube that dies, it was bad from the get go(bad seals) or you kept it way past its usable life. The smaller T8s are supposed to last much longer; we'll see.

But for those who still use T12 lights, change the tubes every 2-3 years whether you think they need it or not.

That's a good point. If you mix colors it's best to mix two in the same fixture and do so consistently throughout the shop.

As others have said, the electronic ballast florescents are the way to go. I really like triten 50 bulbs. Very bright, 5000K. These are very white and natural looking. Not warm and orange. Not blue like the higher K.

I got mine here. Good service and if I remember correctly, the owner is a classical player. http://jandslighting.com/catalog/produc ... ucts_id=50

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http://www.chassonguitars.com

The 6500K "sunlight" lamps I've tried have just been migraine/near-seizure inducing for me. Maybe there are ones that are better, but I like the low Kelvin color like 3500K. Not sure why the K rating and the color rendering index rating don't always track, but I'm using 3500K T8's that have like a 90 CRI (they're Philips, I forget the model name or # - got them at the Home Despot). That said, I may try some 5000K lamps next time. My shop walls are open stud/raw wood so there's not the normal white wall reflectivity and a higher K "whiter" light might be better.

My ceiling is also open, exposed trusses on 2' centers. I found that the 4-lamp, 4' type of tray fixtures that are meant for offices with those drop ceilings fit right in between the trusses, so my main lighting is all flush to the ceiling level instead of protruding down. I did my ceiling at 9' because I do cabinets and such too, and the diagonal of a sheet of plywood is just shy of 9'. So I can rotate a sheet of ply vertically without hitting the ceiling. If my lighting stuck down I'm sure I'd cream the occasional fixture

Oh, and the T8's with electronic ballast are indeed the bee's knees. The pulse frequency is set by the ballast in the high Kilohertz range instead of using the 60Hz from your AC, so there is no perceivable flicker, or hum! Technically it is there, but even your dog can't hear an 80KHz (or whatever it is) "hum". The following may be urban legend, but I read/heard somewhere that the 60Hz pulse of the old style flourescent lights can sometimes sync with the rotation of a sawblade like a timing light and make it appear to be still when it is running If true, that's another plus of the T8/electronic ballast lights.

Peace,
Sanaka

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...imagine there were no hypothetical situations...

http://bqtool.com/cart/ballnose-mills-c ... 54cdddab21
these are the lights that I used to replace the old tubes I had. I now use 1/2 the electricity and doubled the lumen output. I do have 4 windows for some natural lighting. These lights work great for me and along with these I use tract lighting for task areas.

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John Hall
blues creek guitars
Authorized CF Martin Repair
Co President of ASIA
You Don't know what you don't know until you know it

So, John, those "Ballnose End Mills" give off good light. Who'da Thunk!

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Waddy

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