What kind of plug is this on my lamp?

January 20, 2005 6:41 AM

I have a lamp with a weird plug. Blurry pictures, but what kind of plug is this? (also here)
posted by stupidsexyFlanders to Technology (10 answers total)

Ikea's low voltage lighting. You need a 12V wall adapter (AC or DC will do) rated for about 2amps per light bulb.

You may have to splice the wires, I don't think you can buy that connector anywhere... I will check digikey just in case though...
posted by Chuckles at 6:59 AM on January 20, 2005

Looks like a plug for an external power transformer brick. Some low-voltage xenon and halogen lamps (yep, even table lamps) have them.

On preview -- what Chuckles said. But that connector is used on more than Ikea products.
posted by eschatfische at 7:04 AM on January 20, 2005

For what it's worth, you can buy a lamp that uses that connector at Ikea for the price of a general-purpose wall wart (which would still need splicing) at Radio Shack.
posted by mendel at 7:58 AM on January 20, 2005

To answer the question literally, that's a 2-pin DIN plug.
posted by cillit bang at 8:15 AM on January 20, 2005

Looks like a few IKEA lamps I have. They give you an apple-sized transformer with 2 prongs for the wall, and a place to plug this wire in. It's actually a nice feature being able to disattach the wire from the transformer - makes it easider to extract the cord from other cords and such. If you're missing the brick, you may be out of luck.
posted by scarabic at 9:04 AM on January 20, 2005

Response by poster: It's probably in Ikea purchase. Maybe I'll stop by Ikea and see what they can do for me, or else just by one of those $5 lamps. Are the bricks that fit these plugs interchangeable, or do they provide a specific level of power? I'd had to throw $5 at the problem for naught.
posted by stupidsexyFlanders at 9:14 AM on January 20, 2005

There's not much to a lamp, really, with the transformer out of the picture -- wires running to a bulb, basically. So take a look at the specs of the bulb in the lamp you have, and see if they match the specs of the bulb in the cheap Ikea lamp.
posted by mendel at 12:41 PM on January 20, 2005

Weird coincidence - just yesterday I was soldering some of these very same plugs for a speaker set, not having seen them in many years. It is, most certainly, a 2 pin Din plug as cillit bang said above.
posted by tomble at 2:35 PM on January 20, 2005

2 pin Dins (thanks cillit bang) are not common at all in North America. I looked through the entire connector section in the Newark catalogue beside me, and it just isn't there.
posted by Chuckles at 3:49 PM on January 20, 2005

Thanks everyone-- i just got a lamp like this one and because of your answers i now know what it is!
posted by earlyadopter at 8:25 AM on December 30, 2005