Raw Material
 

I kind of considered the MPJA lights as "raw material" to make what I really wanted. What's useful about these are the lenses and diffusers and the mounting body. They come apart really easily. Just a little prying with an Xacto knife and the terminal end cap along with the LED and dropping resistor come right out of the barrel. The lens and white diffuser at the other end pop right out either with gentle prying or you can push them out from behind after removing the LED.

The lights in the photo below are actually the 8x11mm (smaller) lights from MPJA.



These things as they come from MPJA are even dimmer than the larger ones (they have a 3mm LED). After removing the guts from each housing, I made up some new LEDs and dropping resistors using flat top (wide angle) high brightness 5mm LEDs from superbrightleds.com. The LED/resistor/wire combos were heat shrinked and then inserted in the MPJA housings with a little black silicon rubber to hold them.




The Text/Images on each light are merely inkjet printed on some Avery clear mailing labels, lightly sprayed with some clear to make them moisture proof, and then adhered to the top surface of the white diffuser. The diffuser goes back in the lens and the lens goes back on the light housing. This photo is a bit out of focus in places but you get the idea.



Much, much brighter than even the larger MPJA lights. It's really not hard to do if you have just a little soldering skill.

BTW - I'm not sure if I'm going to stick with the symbols on some of the lights or change them out to text.

I had the same issue while testing, specifically the green indicator. I burned out two. The specs on the web site indicate a 3-12VDC operating range. The brightness of the indicators seemed to max out at about 9VDC. I stepped the supplied voltage down with resistors, so the LEDs would never see more than about 10.5VDC. Hopefully they will last.

The primary feature of the MPJA lamps is that they are cheap. It looks like modifications (replacing the LEDs and resistors) is a wise choice for reliability.

Why not use these indicators? They are available in a number of colors, round, square and rectangular bezels.

Better yet, you can get versions that have pushbutton switches built into the lamps (useful for testing the lamp operation for example). IDEC also makes rotary switches and keylock switches in this product line.

At about $6.52 per light, they are economical. Downside is the size (plan on 1 inch centers). Upside is the quality.