Making dolls house ceiling lights.

This is a stand alone entry into the process of making the house for Daisy.
I wanted to make ceiling lights that could be removed and changed easily and so they needed to be some sort of plug in arrangement that works with the house as it is.

Lets start with the lampshades. After a lot of looking around I settled on a variety of drinks bottles that have a covered drinking nipple, I bought these as I wanted the coloured caps, but found others in the recycling bins.

First removed the screw top. Then cut away the translucent cap, and also removed the retaining ring from the nipple. Using the groove the retaining ring was in carefully cut the nipple away from the screw cap.

Cut or drill a hole in the translucent cap. I started with 5mm so I could test the idea with an LED.

The hole in the nipple is larger but usable. (This is a nipple from a different bottle.)

For the light itself I started with a 5mm LED. It is worth using fine abrasive paper, or Scotchbrite to dull the surface of the LED at this stage so that the light is defuse and not a spot on the house floor.

Bend the legs out. I used jewellers round needle nose pliers to hold the base of the leg so the bend doesn’t stress the LED chip.

I then bent the legs back on themselves so that there would be a springy flexible length of leg for the mounting.

I am using barrel jacks for the ceiling connection.

Cut off the solder terminals from the barrel jack, some insulation might need trimming off from the outer/ring/negative terminal.

The LED was then placed on to the barrel jack. With some practice in how the terminals are bent about it can spring into place quite well. Do check the polarity of the LED is correct, I am keeping consistent with the centre pin being positive.

The LED can then be soldered in place and the legs trimmed off.

To fit the barrel jack to the bottle cap I found that a 7mm hole drilled in to the cap and then tapped a thread. No idea what thread the barrel jack has but half way up an M8 x 1.25 taper tap was close enough to work.

I used a button cell and a barrel jack socket to test.

Here is the range of ceiling lights I am going to use as a starting point.
From L-R top row: Bathroom, Landing, Bedroom.
From L-R bottom row: Kitchen, stairs, two living room lights.
With this set up I am able to unscrew the lampshades to change them and also unplug the LED and swap for pendants, chandeliers, or whatever else Daisy decides on in the future.

Bathroom light installed.

Landing light installed.

Bedroom light installed.

To install the lights in the ceiling I drilled a 7mm hole and tapped it to M8 x 1.25 and screwed in the barrel jack line socket. I could use a chassis socket but the hole would need to be bigger and reduce options in the future, and the chassis sockets I have in stock are asymmetric!

I will do the socket installation and wiring as a part of the house build blog entries.