The amount of cheap LEDs on the market that barely light up is mind boggling. I’d like some very bright led strips (white) that I can use on the underside of our superpit upper frame to light up the lower work surface.
In the past when I wanted eye meltingly bright LEDs I usually had to spend in the $100/15ft range and sourced them from ultra bright leds. What’s out there that is better/more cost efficient?
If you’ve got the extra thickness to spare, step up to something beefier: https://www.harborfreight.com/5500-lumen-4-ft-linkable-led-hanging-shop-light-59506.html
Wait for a sale and you can get this easily for sub-$20. We’ve bought three over the years; one died under mysterious circumstances. Still, it’s plenty to make a white work surface the just right amount of bright.
Unfortunately we have to stay low profile 1/2". I have some of those strips in the build space and they do work quite well.
The unpainted aluminum frame on the front of the superpit seen here is where the light strip is going.
Hard to tell what the constraints are from that pic, but I believe you. (And at that point, I might audition something like a clamp light. Which won’t saturate the whole workbench, but it might be the right amount for where someone is working.
I just used some 12v rgb LEDs with all the colors connected and VHB’d them to the underside of our cabinets
These are the led strips we used in our superpit, you do have to buy in large quantities but they are very bright. Relatively low profile but still might be too thick for you.
https://www.amazon.com/Fixture-Lumens-Output-Utility-Warehouse/dp/B07J1L19G1/
So this is what we purchased, and 2 of them went bad right outside the return window, we’ve been looking for a replacement and have been debating going with a more DIY solution like:
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0C49QSTJ7
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B08L9GWJK1
We haven’t made a decision yet on what path to go with.
That sucks, we’ve thankfully never had any fail. Doing diy is a fine alternative, we run leds on our robot with similar led covers. But why buy those expensive led strips when normal pixeled ones will look similiar?
We figured if we were going DIY we might as well go all out and get RGB for fun media shots.
Ikea under cabinet lights work great.
I installed these under our kitchen cabinets 10 years ago and they’re still running great after a decade of over 50% duty cycle use. They aren’t the cheapest, but are low profile and we’ve had no complaints. If you were trying to use them for workbench lighting, I might be inclined to over-do it slightly by mounting a strip fore and aft on the shelf overhead to give you double the light.
I also installed Barrina LED shop lights in my basement and garage and my in-laws basement. I’ve been happy with them, with two notes that are relevant here: they are not low-profile like the Lightkiwi ones and the clips are not particularly robust (on either of them).
