Stand adaptors (again)

[richardash1981]

I'm trying to locate two things which I expected to be reasonably easy to find, but can't seem to find anyone selling. Do they not exist (outside of a workshop to make one), or am I looking for the wrong thing?

Item 1: mount an LED worklight (20W, 1kg) onto a photo-type lighting stand with a 5/8" male spigot (is this a "baby spigot?"). Ideally a female M6 or M8 thread so I can bolt the light to the receiver, but any reasonable thread could be made to work. Manfrotto seem to have the only solution to this, but with a 10mm male thread on it. I can find masses of male 5/8" or 16mm spigots, (including lots of male-male adaptors) but nothing that will fit onto them!

Item 2: mount a single LED worklight to a lighting stand with a 25mm (+ powder coat, so more like 26mm) top tube. The stand came with a 1m long cross bar which is fine, but cumbersome for just one light (which I would like to be in the middle, which isn't possible with the bar). Only thing I have found is these cap adaptors. I've got a pair of 35mm ones already (for speaker stands) which are good, so these are an option. I would have liked a 25mm to 35mm expander sleeve to stick in the existing ones, so I don't need two sets, but such a thing doesn't seem to exist, only adaptors going the other way (35mm pole to 25mm socket, which is the hard way!).

 

[sandall]

8 hours ago, richardash1981 said:

I would have liked a 25mm to 35mm expander sleeve to stick in the existing ones, so I don't need two sets, but such a thing doesn't seem to exist

The easy solution involves some plastic water pipe & a hacksaw🙂

[J Pearce]

11 hours ago, richardash1981 said:

Manfrotto seem to have the only solution to this, but with a 10mm male thread on it.

 

Can't you just put the thread through the yoke of the floodlight then put a nut on? (Or have I missed something?). A lot of spigots work this way, as do the excellent Supaclamps. The socket then stays on the item for speedy setup.

[richardash1981]

8 hours ago, sandall said:

The easy solution involves some plastic water pipe & a hacksaw🙂

I thought about this, then got confused about sizes. Having another go now I know it's not a stupid idea:
- Common blue cold water pipe is MDPE pipe.
- MDPE pipe is sold by the outside diameter (this seems to be very inconsistent between pipe types).
- 32mm outside diameter pipe has a 26mm nominal inside diameter (3mm wall thickness, this is a minimum so presumably the inside diameter could be a little less)

Although places like Screwfix will only sell me a 25m coil and upwards, there are sellers on ebay who will sell short cut lengths (and for this purpose I'm mostly not worried about quality control / cleanliness etc!).

I also looked at "pipe liners" because they kept coming up in searches - it turns out that these fit inside the inside diameter to support the pipe when using compression fittings. So their outside diameter is smaller than the stated size by two times the wall thickness. The next size above 32mm OD is 50mm OD, which has 40.8mm ID - so 50mm liners are likely too big for 38mm fittings, and the inner diameter is not well defined - so not a good idea.

6 hours ago, J Pearce said:

Can't you just put the thread through the yoke of the floodlight then put a nut on? (Or have I missed something?). A lot of spigots work this way, as do the excellent Supaclamps. The socket then stays on the item for speedy setup.

Fine if the yoke is beefy enough to take the M10 bolt - my concern is that the lightweight pressed steel yoke on the LED work lights only has an 8mm (or less) hole, and not enough metal to stand drilling it out to 10mm. I can work around this with a offset plate, it's just a bit of a pain when there are so many different sorts of 35mm adaptors (for example)!

It took me a long time to figure out that the correct search term for the thing a spigot goes in might be "receiver" and I'm still not convinced I'm searching effectively ...

Thanks to all for the help, as always here you get advice which makes you alter how you think about the problem, not just what to do.

(Apologies if this comes out twice, but I can't see what I thought I just posted at the moment).

[themadhippy]

Quote

8mm (or less) hole, and not enough metal to stand drilling it out to 10mm.

10mm male  to 8mm or 6mm female thread adaptor?

[boatman]

Is this what you are looking for? I turned it many years ago from a chunk of hex bar. The hex end was drilled & tapped to M10 with a bit of studding screwed in (with Loctite). You can make the stud any size you want. If you have a Men's Shed in your locality, give them a call as it's something they should be happy to knock up for you (we do this sort of thing every week in our Shed).

[richardash1981]

5 minutes ago, boatman said:

Is this what you are looking for?

It's the inverse I need - the stand has the spigot on it, I need the hollow bit (receiver?) to go on the light. Probably still not hard to machine from square stock. I don't know if any of the nearby Men's Sheds stretch to metal machining (as opposed to some very good woodwork) but a good idea to ask!
This is the one off the old Italian video light:
https://flic.kr/p/2pi64wJ

[themadhippy]

Quote

the stand has the spigot on it, I need the hollow bit (receiver?) to go on the light.

even easier to find ,10mm female to 8mm male,try your local indy motorcycle dealer and ask for a mirror adaptor

[boatman]

58 minutes ago, richardash1981 said:

It's the inverse I need - the stand has the spigot on it, I need the hollow bit (receiver?) to go on the light. Probably still not hard to machine from square stock. I don't know if any of the nearby Men's Sheds stretch to metal machining (as opposed to some very good woodwork) but a good idea to ask!
This is the one off the old Italian video light:
https://flic.kr/p/2pi64wJ

So, an M16 connecting nut would be a good place to start. I'll be in the Inverness Men's Shed on Tuesday and I'll see what we've got to hand.

[sunray]

Choose the right size Tee to suit the stand, drill and tap the caps to suit your fixing screw and locking screw.

I did this in a hurry about 50 years ago to mount a crossbar for horn loudspeakers on on a steel security screen and used brass reducing bushes drilled and tapped for 5/16" Whitworth. I used the same system several years running for their open day.

 

Obviously turning a piece of stock is the nice way of doing it. I had some turned for 32mm stands with M10 female threads and M8 locking thread for a customer, fortunately at the time I had a friend with a lathe

Loads with a male thread to chose from

https://www.ebay.co.uk/sch/I.html?_from=R40&_trksid=p4432023.m570.l1313&_nkw=5%2F8"+lighting+stand+adapter&_sacat=0

[sunray]

Thinking further a nipple and female cap may work. 1/2" usually comes up quite big. Take a stand to a local plumbing supplier.

[sandall]

17 hours ago, richardash1981 said:

I thought about this, then got confused about sizes.

I had a few things mounted on 35mm Bose/Ramsa-type speaker plates that I wanted to put on lightweight 32mm speaker stands. A rummage in the garage produced some ends of 1-1/4" (32mm) plastic waste-pipe, left over from various DiY plumbing jobs. A lengthwise cut down about 1" of it, & either some gaffer or another layer of pipe - job done.

[sunray]

17 minutes ago, sandall said:

I had a few things mounted on 35mm Bose/Ramsa-type speaker plates that I wanted to put on lightweight 32mm speaker stands. A rummage in the garage produced some ends of 1-1/4" (32mm) plastic waste-pipe, left over from various DiY plumbing jobs. A lengthwise cut down about 1" of it, & either some gaffer or another layer of pipe - job done.

That has reminded me; I aquired some PC monitor arms parts, basically a heavy duty anglepoise which sat in a 32mm diameter (or threabouts) fairly shallow (30mm deep?) cup. the bottom of the cup had a 10mm hole and shallow 17mm hex recess, the idea being to take a bolt to fix to a bracket or as was often the case a hole drilled through the desk.

It wasn't until I asked my friend if he could turn the hole out to 35mm that he pointed out it had a plastic liner and removing that found the cup was a tight fit on my 35mm stands but didn't fit all.

[richardash1981]

A couple of the Manfrotto adaptors are on their way from Thomann (I found something else to make the shipping seem more reasonable), but I'll bear in mind the various plumbing fitting suggestions (and look for a local plumbing supplier of the right sort).

A piece of plastic water pipe is also on it's way, which should be the right size, I was wondering about splitting it to make it clamp more effectively so will probably go down that route, and see whether it needs a layer of tape to make it hold.

Thanks again for all the help offered.

[richardash1981]

Just to finish this off, the water pipe arrived. It won't go over the stand as-is because it's somewhat elliptical (from being coiled I think), but splitting it with a hacksaw made it slide on fine, and the 35mm cap fits over and clamps down. Slight wobble but no issue, I've now used it a couple of times and am happy.

The Manfrotto adaptors also arrived and have worked fine, so two lightweight stands with battery LED lights on the top for outdoor jobs.

Thanks again for the help getting this sorted.