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Cheap Incandescent Headlamp Conversion

Harbor Freight sells these cheap incandescent headlamps for like $3.00. For what they cost they are not half bad. Still, I’d prefer an LED over the incandescent bulb.

Cheap Incandescent Headlamp Conversion

I had one of these Harbor Freight headlamps (HFHL) and a broken LED flashlight. The flashlight used a 1 watt LED mounted to an aluminium PCB. The flashlight’s driver still worked too so I used it and the LED to convert the HFHL.

I removed some of the guts (plastic bits) from the HFHL to make room for the new LED, heatsink and driver.

Cheap Incandescent Headlamp Conversion

I initially tried it without any sort of heatsink bu, it had “heat management issues.”

Cheap Incandescent Headlamp Conversion

Cheap Incandescent Headlamp Conversion

So, I added a piece of aluminum from the donor flashlight as a heatsink. I hot-glued the driver to the bottom of the heatsink (covered it in electrical tape to prevent shorts). I tacked the LED to the heat sink with hot-glue and did the same with the reflector. Before tacking the LED in place I added a bit of thermal compound to the bottom of the LED for good measure.

Cheap Incandescent Headlamp Conversion

I had to drill out the hole in the reflector so the LED would fit.

Cheap Incandescent Headlamp Conversion

Cheap Incandescent Headlamp Conversion

After adding the heatsink the temperature stayed reasonable but I drilled some holes in the top of the case so heat could escape.

Cheap Incandescent Headlamp Conversion

Works pretty well.

Cheap Incandescent Headlamp Conversion

This post is licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0 by the author.