Adding LED lights to a router

Thanks for your kind words Steve. I left high school in December 1949 after spending most of the final year in the physics lab. learning electronics from a wonderful master who had been a RADAR in instructor in the RAF during the war. He found me a job as an improver radio and TV technician. As a 16 year old "know it all" technicians around me were as new to television as I was so, unlike me they were wary of this new technology and so left me more or less to it! The result was that I progressed very quickly and this was the beginning of a very successful 50 year career, at least half of it in business, starting TV and audio, then audio only followed by VCR's only up to retirement in 2000.
As for woodworking I started very young, buying my first hand plane at age 13 and I've never stopped, that is until health problems stopped me about three years ago. My first router was purchased in 1974, a rather crude B&D.

You might find this site useful as a source for parts. https://www.superbrightleds.com/?ms...erm=led lighting supplies&utm_content=General

I think I'd start with a power supply meant for an LED light of some sort. We used to call it full wave rectified--a steady stream of direct current. A half wave unit will just cause filckering. You can find raw LEDs in a variety of places. They have raw wire leads you'd have to insulate if you just attached the LEDs to the inside of the base, so you'd want to lay a coat of plastic to where the wires would connect as insulation, or use some fine heat shrink wrap to insulate. I think you could tape the wire from the power supply to the LED to the router's power cord. Rockler has some non adhesive wrap that might do for this, but I wouldn't use standard duct tape with its gooey adhesive. For occasional use, a battery would be easier, but not for constant use.

The idea to me is to integrate the LEDs with the base with the least bulk you can, that means raw LEDs glued in place with epoxy, to me.

Sign carvers like this one from Amazon.

This low cost one from, I think K Mart some years ago was very useful.

just a Public Service Announcement from a guy in the lighting field.

If you have a choice of color temperatures, the highest perceived illumination for the human eye will come from 4000-6500 K temperature LEDs. That's why parking garages use 5000k color that isn't very pretty, but they meet code requirements for foot candles while keeping power consumption to a minimum. Contrast is what the human eye needs in order to see details. Think about newspapers and how in bright environments you may not need reading glasses.

4000k is a typical commercial color used in offices etc, altho a lot of that is changing. 2700-3000 is what you see in residential kitchens and washrooms. 3500 k is used in most architectural designs.

6500 gives the best pop of colours etc and is what I use to light up my workshop.

If you really have a choice, CRI (color rendering index) is standardized at 80+, some nicer spaces call for 90+ and museums and other high value environments call for even higher numbers. I believe California recently introduced 95CRI requirements for their (new) street lighting. This will eventually be adopted throughout the industry, so everything will end up looking nicer.

Think about how when walking thru Home Depot's lighting section, the glare and harshness has improved every year......along with light levels and efficiencies.

It's a great time to be alive and see all these (new) technologies mature and flourish.......