One not-very-light light
The Snail bought a couple of craft lamps from an online auction the other day, an auction of things that had been returned to catalogues or shops. These are those LED ones, with a magnifying glass built in. With these large online affairs, you can never be sure what you will actually get, there are no guarantees that the things will be fully functional.
Neither of the lamps that arrived worked on switch on, which seemed a bit odd, so I swung into action*.
I checked the power supplies that came with them – you’ll remember I had to replace the one for the Snail’s lamp (see here for the details) – and they both worked fine. It was time to open them up…
Not many bits to go wrong in fact
It would appear on the first one that the On/Off switch was only interested in the Off position. It was odd, though, because it really looked as if the two bits of metal are touching and making the circuit but they clearly don’t. I did a classic bit of finagling and bent both bits of the switch towards each other, just a tad, and tried it out. Success!
This is not on… literally
The second lamp had the identical problem.
Subtle, I know, but the switch is slightly modified
I wonder how many of these are not returned to the seller, but end up in land fill, all for the want of a bit of simple metal bending? This is probably a common fault with these, so we will be looking out for more of these returns!
oOo
writinghouse 
that’s a neat fix which saved good items from landfill 🙂
the lamps look interesting too. Are they used for needlecrafts? or for anything that might require magnifying?
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They are indeed sold as craft lights, but I think they are also marketed as reading lamps too. They are pretty handy things!
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ypu ùight want to go scavenging in your local tip (if that’s allowed) to see if you can find any more of this type of lamp. What a simple fix, and what a shame the fault wasn’t made known to the manufacturer!
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Unfortunately, scavenging on the tip isn’t allowed anymore (our local one is, in fairness, run by a company who work very hard to ensure nothing ends up in landfill so I am only a little bit miffed about not being able to). I don’t think the manufacturer can have done any basic tests just before these things were packaged up as they were in their original packaging which suggests they never worked. 🙂
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These lamps were definitely worth fixing. I’ve had three identical ones (one each for our chairs, and one for the sewing room) for nearly 10 years, and they’re still working just fine, used every day. Perfect for embroidery, needle threading, splinter extracting, tiny fine print reading and as a good strong light for photography. We actually bought a spare power cord the other day because one of the two small pins from cord to adaptor bent and we were worried about breaking it off if we bent it back too vigorously. In the end it wasn’t a problem, but it’s good to have a spare, especially as we have three!
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Always good to have a spare power supply for these things (battery or mains) as they are so useful! 🙂
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excellent.
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