Hey all,
I recently received Tamiya’s Work Stand and I’d have to say I love it. I do all of my modelling work on the kitchen table, so this item is a life saver. The more I use it, the more I like it. The only downside is the LED lights. They just don’t seem very powerful to me. It doesn’t seem that many people own one of these Work Stands. Is there a reason behind that?? It seems to be a pretty nice tool to me.
Jesse
i have one and i love it. i must agree with u about the lighting though , as it could be brighter. as far as maybe not many people not having one my guess would be because some may feel that it is not needed as they have other methods for light and magnifying,and too expensive for some. tamiya products arte simply the bomb![8D]
You can say that again. I recently purchased their tweezers and files to replace my aging Squadron ones. I was amazed at how nice the Tamiya tools were engineered. I’m hoping to get their PE bending pliers. I saw them in the store and they look great. You get what you pay for…
-Jesse
I’ve been considering getting one of those, but I haven’t pulled the trigger yet. I’m having a hard time justifying the cost of something I don’t really “need” considering how much money I’ve already spent since I got back into the hobby a couple of months ago. Your review has made me want one even more though. Btw, are the LEDs battery operated or does it plug in somewhere?
Battery powered or there’s a jack for an AC power adapter. What’s nice about it is the wide area over which the magnification stays focused. I’m sure there’s an optical term for this but it’s much better than those swing arm lamps with the round magnifier. As stated, the downside are those darn LEDs [:(!]. It was frustrating enough that I ripped out their LEDs and replaced them with some super-bright white LEDs I got on eBay.
For me there are two reasons.
The first and biggest is that it is too small. I to work on the kitchen table and spread myself across almost the entire table.
The second is the price. I just could not justify spending that much when all I really would need is maybe a magnifying lens. Oh wait, I have a small one that works fine attached to my magic fingers. Besides, my wife would kill me and sell my stash for cheap.
In an attempt to help me accomodate the conflict for space to work on RC and plastic models more or less at the same time, I bit the bullet for the workstand. Not the best decision I have ever made. Greatly overpriced for what you get; IMHO $30 or $35 might be reasonable, but $90 including shipping ??? The lighting is cosmetic, not functional; the workspace is limited (but I expected that). Oh well, I did it so I’ll use it, but …
I am so happy that I do not have this problem !
I saw Tamiya workstand - it is really small.
I started to work on my desk - (home office) but soon decided I can not keep hobby and work in the same room - it just does not provide the required advantage - RELAX
I have finished basement, so I clean unused portion, placed some old table there, two lamps with good fluorescent light, plus a bonus tv set and an old dvd player do the trick. I am watching Swanny’s DVD while working on my models
This is my RELAX place [:D]
stan2004, how on earth did you manage to “rip out the LEDs and replace them?” They didn’t look replaceable to me. I bought a Tamiya woorkstand some time ago, and all the LEDs burned out very quickly, much to my abundant frustration. I would love to replace them, but didn’t think it possible, and Tamiya won’t answer my inquiries about the subject. Soooo…how the heck does one replace the Tamiya bulbs, and specifically with what?
Thanks,
Rory
No, I don’t think they are meant to be user-replaceable. Mine didn’t burn out, they were just useless - or maybe got dimmer over many years but I don’t recall them ever being bright. Per photo, I see I used 10mm (diameter) white LEDs. I just eBay-searched “10mm white LED” and I see these LEDs are getting brighter and brighter so whatever I used is surely obsolete. Unfortunately it’s been a while since I did it but it involved soldering, re-wiring, and IIRC a few bucks of Radio Shack parts. I realize I’m not giving you a solution except to suggest it can be done. Frankly, I’m surprised someone doesn’t sell an upgrade kit.
LEDs are going to have to get a heck of a lot brighter before I will ever use them to illuminate a working area. Case in point, my oldest son recently bought an LED flashlight which was powered by 2 AA batteries. It’s brighter than most LED flashlights (4 LED w/a magnifying lense over them). It still doesn’t iluminate as well as my little Mag Lite (which also uses 2 AA batteries). In my opinion, LED illumination tend to be more of a fad or “in” thing than anything else. (It has LEDs! - Buy it NOW!). Never mind they don’t do the job 1/2 as well as what they are supposed to replace.
I respectfully disagree. LEDs are used in traffic lights and now vehicle brake lights. While headlights went down the incandescent halogen-krypton-xenon path (like MagLite), I believe headlights too will eventually use LEDs. LED efficiency (light output or Lumens per Watt) surpassed incandescents a while back and recently surpassed fluorescents. One LED advantage is negligible heat from the Tamiya workstand. I’ll take the what-an-idiot hit but I have been distracted away while working on plastic models closely illuminated by a Halogen lamp only to come back and find they warped [:O].
The downside is there are no full-spectrum LEDs like Ott natural lights. My understanding is “they” are working on this. Essentially all models are of outdoor prototypes. Yet we build them and view them, including modeling contests, under incandescent or fluorescent lighting. So while the colors might be exact per FS # our models do not appear as they would in their native environment. That’s irony [sigh].
Rambling a bit more, tiny LEDs have made it practical to illuminate our models themselves (cockpits, cabins, instrument panels, etc.) without worrying about melting or replacing burned out bulbs [2c].
Geez, you’d think I was some kind of LED industry lobbyist. Not [:)].
BTW, MagLite just came out with LED flashlights [;)].
FYI, the main reason that LEDs are used in brake lights and traffic lights is their response time. Rather than take the time to warm something even as conductive as Tungsten or another filament enough to make it glow, LEDS light up much faster (the speed of electrons, if you will), giving you more reaction time to hit the brakes and not hit someone else.
[(-D]
I think you will find that LEDs are used with an eye to redundancy as opposed to response time - Mr Driver / Mr Traffic lamp man has no need to replace them when one blows, unlike your usual filament lamp.
And they use much less energy to get the same light output as a conventional buld using a lot more and wasting a lot more due to heat.
I think the Tamiya stand probably appeals to people without a dedicated work area more than people that have a nice sized desk to work at. I feel like it would be just a waste to work on that when I have a whole desk to work on, but if your working on the kitchen table, I can really see its use, as the wife would probably kill when she finds a nice gouge from the hobby knife in the table or paint on it… My mother about killed me when I was younger, I used to build on the coffee table in the living room, and had many little marks on the table when she got me a card table to work at [:-^]
The time of lighting between LED and conventional lights is really negligable in that sense. Humans can’t notice a difference.
There are different grades of LEDs. I suspect Tamiya is using a low light LED, probably because they are cheaper. Traffic lights and brake lights with LEDs are very bright, and they don’t burn out. I work at The Ohio State University’s bus service, and we use LED tail lights on all our buses. Let me tell you, you know they’re lit. The only thing is, due to constant vibration and bumps in the road, the LEDs will sometimes not light. This is due to the solder breaking, I believe. Many police forces are using LED light bars (The really really thin ones), and those are bright as all get out. Plus, LEDs really do use a ton less electricity that their incandecent cousins.
RadMax and Milairjunkie,
I studied EDM (Electronic Device Modeling) at Rose-Hulman, which, like most of their classes involves a lot of ugly math [zzz], but in a nutshell, teaches you how to model electronic devices (go figure) without the unrealistic assumptions of perfect devices that don’t have ramp-up times, heat transfer, and all that other ugly stuff.
Anyways, long story short, bulbs can take tenths of a second to light up, but LEDs can light up in MILLISECONDS. In response time, let’s say, conservatively, that the use of LEDs gains you 400 ms. When traveling at 70mph (just under 103 feet/second) that equates to more than 40 feet of extra stopping distance, which is oftentimes way more than the difference between a safe trip and an ambulance ride. And that, according to the Engineering ethics, is the biggest reason to use them in automotive/street applications. It betters people’s lives.[:)]
Off my [soapbox], or rather, lectern, now, it is rather dumb, from our point of view, and from a purely engineering-based standpoint, for Tamiya to use LEDs since anyone who buys one of their workbenches is going to spend a huge amount of time using it [:)]…and sooner or later that bulb will burn out. While its nice to have a longer lasting bulb, which an LED is, its even better to be able to replace a broken bulb easily, and it doesn’t sound like an easy fix with the workbench.
Alex,
While that “ugly” math shows a decrease in lighting time of 400ms (0.004 seconds), a human’s inability to react that fast probably wouldn’t make much difference at 70mph, which is in excess of the speed limit in most states and provinces I know of! Reduce that speed to 30mph and you end up with less than a car length of braking time. The resulting rear end collision will make short work of those expensive tail light assemblies!
My seat of the pants observation tells me that the LEDs are brighter, but not realistically faster. They will last longer (if the connections don’t break) and use less electricity (not really a factor in a vehicle that produces it’s own electrical power). I think the biggest bonus of using LEDs in car lighting is the redundancy. Multiple bulbs per light assembly mean that the light still glows even when bulbs start to die.
I’ve been using the same bulbs (1156 & 1157) in tail lights for almost 35 years. Cheap, easy to replace, and they actually last quite a long time. I think the tamiya workstand uses them solely to reduce heat and the size of the lamps, more than any other reason.
Bgrigg, and all…
A rebuttal if you will, as I just want to set the record straight, and then I think we can let this [#offtopic] thread die…(I’m guilty of starting it, I know…[;)])
The ugly math is in the actual EDM, not the simple unit conversion from mph to fps then multiplying by time elapsed.
400ms is not 0.004s, but rather 0.4 seconds, which is definitely noticeable, and a big boon to most people’s reaction times.
Every state I’ve been in has an interstate speed limit of at least 70mph. Most are more like 75-80mph. At 35 mph, the standard legal city/town speed limit, we are still looking at 20 feet of EXTRA stopping distance. If we were to start stopping at less than a car length from the 0-0 point (0 acceleration, 0 velocity, complete stop), no amount of improved reaction time would prevent an accident.
Also, multiple bulbs only keep working when wired in parallel. If they are wired in series, if one fails, they all fail. Unfortunately, wiring in parallel leads to a reduction in current per bulb, causing incandescent light bulbs to be (even) dimmer. This is not a factor with LEDs because they have such a low current draw.
I reiteriate: LEDs are substantially faster, and the reason they are used in automotive/street level applications is their ability to reduce accidents. My own engineering education and experience aside, here are a few more sources to hopefully settle this once and for all. I’ve tried to get purely scientific, governmental, or consumer level sources, first for unbiased information, and secondly for ease of understanding.
http://chemistry.beloit.edu/BlueLight/pages/hp/an1155-3.pdf (Fair warning, this one can get a bit hairy)
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/sites/entrez?cmd=Retrieve&db=PubMed&list_uids=8026456&dopt=AbstractPlus
and finally, under the heading “THE TECH ADVANTAGES” at http://autospeed.com/cms/A_109124/article.html
Oh, and I’d have to agree that the main reason Tamiya went with LEDs was heat reduction. That’s a good call, and something I overlooked, not having firsthand experience with the workbench. Thanks for reading along, postulating logical arguments, and above all, keeping this civil, after all, we’re all friends. [:)][#toast]
My apologies to usmc1371, and you can have your thread back now. [;)]