Light Dimmer or Voltage Regulator?

Father's Day brought me a real cool gadget--The Dremel Workstation. This allows me to mount my Dremel rotary tool in a drill press or bench grinder configuration (vertical or horizontal). This is going to come in very handy in constructing various camera rigs and other DIY goodness.

What was even better was realizing that the dimmer project that I built a few episodes ago is literally a voltage regulator. This is super handy in adjusting the RPM of the very-fast Dremel. The rotary dimmer allows me to slow the tool way down and make drilling more like a real drill press. Nice!

As you may recall, this dimmer can be built for $7.25, which is a lot lower that devices sold for this specific purpose, even at a discount house like Harbor Freight Tools. Their model sells for almost three times the price as our homebrew version.

I love finding new uses for stuff like this. Now the dimmer will take up permanent residence near the Dremel where I can control the speed to a more acceptable level.

Of course, this means I need to build another one for my light kit...