Lithium Ion Drill Conversion

  Lately,  I noticed that the battery capacity of my power drill has been diminishing. It has been my habit of fully charging the nickel cadmium battery pack before I store it. And every time I put the drill in action, it starts and slows down drastically. I have to throw it back to the charger and have it fully charged before I used it again.

    So this time, with all the lithium ion batteries I collected from old laptops, I decided to replace the aging nicads with these high end lithium ions. I made sure that the batteries are all balanced charged to 4.25 volts and equal to their holding capacities which I measured to 2300 mAh averaged.

I was able to cut tin strips from the garbage biscuit container to connect the batteries together. I made sure I used the better power soldering iron. A 40 watts worked well, for quick solder transfer, dissipating the heat faster, avoiding too much heat to the batteries.

    With one drill that uses 18 volts, I decided to install 5 lithium ions in series, that is 18.75 working volts. The 24 volts drill, I managed to put 7 in series, that is 26.25 working volts. So far, both drills has been working flawlessly with lots of power, no overheating. Next plan is to build or buy the suitable chargers. On the power and weight, what a huge difference!

HandCrank FlashLight

I wonder how this little handcrank flashlight works. They say its cheap and simply made. Sure enough we have the idea on how it works, but inside that plastic case we don't really know how it ticks.

This little wonder sealed by the plastic case. Picture taken on each sides.

Took it apart, picture in opposite sides with main parts showing the crank, gear, light assembly.

Top left, coil winding, top right showing the lamp assembly composed of 2 led's, 3.6V nimh,

 bottom right is the magnet and gear reatio.

My Cassette Radio To Iphone Conversion

Here is an old Radio Shack cassette tape recorder that has been lying around my house. 

 The back information says it uses a six "C" cell batteries.

 

 

 Exposing the circuit.

 

 I removed the unwanted cassette mchanism.

 

 I then soldered the speaker cable to a low impedance circuit. 

 Using the touch method, locate the input circuit. This should be somewhere near the cassette head connector. When touched, it should not create a loud humming sound than the rest of the circuit. You can series a capacitor to be safe.

 Short together the main power and the motor power.

 

 Add an on/off power switch.

Just like the simple toggle switch above which I super glued from the inside.

 

And presto! There goes my Iphone radio.