Introduction: Change over Punk Flashlights to Lithium Power

Over the years I've equanimous a lot of flashlights, including a bunch of free ones from Harbor Freight. We have them stashed everywhere in drawers and closets and even in our cars. The job is that they run on three AAA batteries which tend to leak if they sit for a hanker time. I've used the popular 18650 lithium batteries in some of the portable electronic projects I've built but those are overly large to fit these small flashlights. I discovered that the 14500 battery is Alcoholics Anonymous size and physically fits the flashlight grammatical case lengthwise. As a bonus, they can also use the cookie-cutter charger as 18650 batteries. This Instructable shows how to recycle some common materials to make the Lithium battery fit perfectly in these flashlights.

Step 1: Materials Needed

- One small LED flashlight

- One 14500 bombardment and charger

- One piece of standard1/2-column inch PVC tabor pipe (approximately 2-1/8 inches long)

- Something to make a contact plate for the + lateral of the battery

Ill-trea 2: Bombardment Holder

All of the flashlights I've qualified semen with a battery bearer and three AAA batteries that allows for up to 4.5 volts for the LEDs. The single14500 battery can be charged up to 4.2 volts so that is right in the ballpark. As mentioned above, the 14500 barrage fire fits nicely lengthwise in the flashlight case merely IT needs something to keep information technology from brisk around side-to-side. I have various pieces of scrap edifice materials around from previous home projects and I found that some standard 1/2-inch PVC pipe fits inner the flashlight spell allowing fitting enough room for the battery to fit on the inside of the pipe. The PVC is easy to split and to the highest degree of the flashlights I modified need a piece about 2-1/8 inches long. You can just deposit the Polyvinyl chloride shriek into the torch, put a mark even with the top edge, and then subtract a puny more than the length that the torch cap will plump in.

Step 3: Contact Plate

As seen in the psychedelic picture above, the inside of the torch has a spring middleman for the + root of the battery. Unfortunately, the spring opening is a bit too large to ensure good contact with the battery. To fix this problem, we need to make a flat meet plate that bequeath break down between the + position of the battery and the spring in the torch. The paint is that it needs to just fit inside of the PVC and not beryllium too thick. The first thing I tried was some flat metal washers. I found some that fit nicely into the PVC but the fix in the middle was also big. The picture above shows three different pieces of rubbish material that I've modified to work. The maiden particular is some soggy gauge solid copper wire that I coiled up. The ordinal token is some ectomorphic scrap Al that I cut and filed to fit. The third item is much scrap printed circuit plank that I cut to size and so soldered get hold of wires happening some sides. ADD a comment if you discover something other that works well.

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