Steampunk Industrial Light Fixture LED

One should never go without a fancy fixture in their humble abode. This serves as not only a very sturdy light fixture, but a wonderful source of conversation as it hangs in your man-cave or what have you. This is no doubt the result of my nerdom and countless hours playing Bioshock. It's simple design and relatively low cost make this a must do project for industrial enthusiasts.

You can expand upon the needed parts for your situation, this will simply depend upon how many light bulbs you actually wish to use. In my example I choose to house four of the bulbs in a single fixture.

4x e26 or e27 light sockets

4x Light bulbs of your choice

4x Nylon washers of the same diameter as the light sockets

8x rubber O-rings that offer a tight fit between your light socket and coupler

4x 1" to 1 & 1/4" galvanized couplers

4x 1" male to male nipples

2x 1" 90 elbows

2x 1" T's

20 feet of lamp wire(don't go below 18 gauge unless you will only use led lamps/high efficiency lights)

4x 18-10 AWG wire nuts

3x 4" male to male galvanized pipe sections.

1x roll of Electrical tape

1x Wire strippers

1x 1/4" drill bit or larger

1x drill

1x plug/power cord(only if you want to use a plug.)

1x Roll of chain to hang your fixture + eyebolts

1x DMM aka Digital Multi meter or analog as I am assuming you will have.

Fear not, this isn't all that hard to do. What we need to accomplish is putting the wires together and guess what? You won't even need a soldering Iron for this tutorial!

To start we need to cut four lengths of paired wire at two feet long and one longer length for the power(This is determined by where you hang your fixture.) that will come out of the fixture. Stripp off about a inch of wire on one end and half that on the other end of each of the pairs of wires you have just cut.

Now to make the actual circuit all you have to do is take each one of the more exposed wires from each pair and slightly twist them together. Secure your new connection by inserting the now twisted wires into the a wire nut and twisting it until you meet a reasonable amount of resistance.

To finish off your wiring repeat the same steps with the remaining exposed wires of the pairs making sure that each wire pair is going into a different wiring nut.

What we have just done is make four parallel connections for each of our light sockets. While all the parts are disconnected it's time to make a exit for the power wire, which should be the longest wire you have left connected to the wire nuts. This is done by using by drilling a 1/4" hole into the side of one of the 4" pipe you have.

Assemble you plumbing parts to look like the picture fishing your wiring through as you go. It makes it a lot easier to do this as you go, as opposed to at the end, trust me I tried it before.

To make the connection from the elbow to the coupler we need to use the 1" nipple we bought. Just slide it over the wire and twist into place. Repeat this for each elbow and T.

Now we are really getting close to where we want to be. Slide the coupler over the wire and follow that up with a nylon washer pressing it into the coupler. Don't attach the coupler to the rest of the assembly yet though.

There is no particular way you have to connect your wires to the light socket, as the bulbs you have are meant to be run off ac(alternating current), so they either have a full bridge rectifier or don't need one. It may make it easier if you tighten the screws so that the wires are turned to the center of the socket, after all they will be going through that nylon washer.

Wrap a short length of electrical tape around the light socket, just to be safe. With how it's secured it shouldn't matter, but you can never be too safe. At this time you may also want to see if you have a ground where you are attaching this fixture, if so you can attach it to the chain your are using to hold the fixture, as this should always be in contact.

You probably have an idea what the o rings are for now. Using one for the bottom and one for the top of the light socket stuff them along with the light socket into the coupler using a Flathead when needed to push them down further into the coupler. Make sure there is some space between the two o rings so that they support the whole length of the light socket and hold it in place as well.

As you guessed it, repeat for each socket.

with the sockets all secured in their respective couplers and those couplers screwed into the rest of your plumbing, turn on your DMM and put the selector into diode test mode, it should look like a little arrow pointing at a line.

Take each one of the leads and touch them together, you should hear a sound. This is the DMM telling you that you have a connection. What we want to do, is make sure the wires we have done don't have a connection to either the housing or the other wire from our power cable. continue by putting the leads across both the power wires coming out of the fixture and from each one of those wires to the housing.(DON'T DO ANYTHING WITH WIRES FROM YOUR HOUSE YET! WE ARE ONLY TESTING A UNPOWERED CIRCUIT AT THIS POINT!)

If you don't hear any more beeps during the testing, your fixture should be safe and ready to go. If you already know how to wire it into your house, you are good to go. If not continue to the next step for more information.

Okay, so you don't know how to wire it up yet. That is okay because you soon will.

Find the wires you want to connect it to and power off the switch leading to them, as well as the breaker that goes to them as well. Never I repeat never assume that anything is not powered, my goal is to get you a kick butt light fixture, not third degree electrical burns so pay attention here.

Take out your DMM again and flip the selctor to Vac or the V next to the wavy line. This shows voltage in ac and will tell us if there is in fact no power to the wires we are about to connect to.

holding the rubber parts of the leads only, touch each one to both the black and the white wire that you want to connect to, if you see 120-240V displayed on your DMM screen then there is still power and you should not touch those wires. If there is no power, then continue by twisting the each of the power wires from your fixture to one wire from your house, securing them with wiring nuts. If you have an interest in learning more about electronics then you may want to vist this youtube page: https://www.youtube.com/user/bigbadtech

Thanks for reading this far, I hope someone found this useful, or at least interesting. I would love to hear what people think about this and their experiences with it. This is my first instruct-able and I think it turned out pretty good.