Inventing ways to use my stash of lithium cells.

It's very strong, very high temperature (above soldering temperatures) and has a high dielectric strength.

Big Clive

Simple question: What are the advantages of Kaptan tape over standard insulating tape? I know it's heat resistant (how much?) but are there other reasons it's used in this type of application?

Stephen Eyles

Those little circuits work very well! I bought some from Aliexpress and use those for charging old 18650's from laptops. For the little "disposable powerbanks" you discussed, I still rely on the CC and CV of my Korad power supply. I think that the load current from that pcb circuit could be too high for those little LiPo's.

Hub Rijcks

The only high current USB power banks I've come across that can maintain the promised output are hefty 10,000 and 20,000mAh units from reputable sources like Walmart/ASDA.

Big Clive

Nice Sissy Squad calculator 🤣. I really like the modular approach you took with this. The heat shrink/hot melt glue technique looks very clean and I plan to try this out in some more projects and see how it fairs. Nice job Clive.

AESFTW

Hey Clive, thanks for another great video. Considering were on the topic of lithium batteries and current draw, i have a question id love answered when/if you have the time. so it is as follows - I have many power banks, some of which were the bare circuits purchased from ebay and some were removed from some cheap power banks, however none of which i've found can provide a high amperage output, by high i mean 2A constant to charge a tablet without falling down below a usable voltage. and also to be able to charge a lithium pack at a higher rate than 400-800ma as one of my home made 18650 banks is 4 cells in parallel which charges painfully slow... might you know of any that can ? or a way to modify an existing example to suit ? i hope this made good sense as a few cold beverages have been had this evening. Cheers - Josh

I have a string of lights here on a doppler detector that runs from a USB power bank. I have to use it with the type that doesn't shut down for the same reason.

Big Clive

Jam packed with interesting little bits and bobs. 30 minutes slid by in no time. Interesting to see the Molex tool technique - not immediately obvious. Encapsulating and strengthening the little resistor connector was very interesting as well - hadn't thought of shrink sleeving over hot melt glue - really neat. Probably every one of your other subscribers do that every day... but it was new to me. Thanks.

Keith Miller

This weekend I made a dopler sensor light in a jar, I have a cat living under my shed and I wanted to see when it was coming out for food. I put one of the dopler modules you reviewed a while ago into a coffee jar, they use 16v - 24v so a boost converter and a power bank provides a portable high output sensor light. The only flaw, the power bank needs more than the quiescent current of the module to wake up, a quick adjustment to the output voltage brings this back on when changing the cell but I'll figure out a better solution when I have more time.

The Tinkering Shed

The two values calculated were 10,000 and 500. So 1/20th rather than half. Although it’s probably not completely linear over that wide a range of capacity. Ewen

Ewen McNeill

Most of my LED projects have been 12v - 24v, mine usually start with a boost converter. I bought a few of the little charge protection boards from China, they were pennies and do the same job as the power bank board but they don't have a USB A socket so you have to solder leads on, this has put a lot of my random 18650 cells to use.

The Tinkering Shed

I did the same, but with a constant current regulator built from two NPN transistors and some resistors used to tune the current. I can dig out the schematic for anyone interested. I assume it's more efficient for a given level of brightness, but I have no way to test that.

Jeremy Impson

This is the tool currently listed by Rapid in the UK:- https://www.rapidonline.com/rvfm-ht-225d-ratchet-action-crimp-tool-ht225d-85-0262 Not sure which if any eBay tool is suitable.

Big Clive

The addition of the molex connectors is a brilliant idea. I have a bunch of "flashlights" all around the house, but with the protection board, the battery and lights all hard wired. I just ordered a boatload of molex connectors for the big conversion. Thanks, Clive!!

Chuck Kirchner

Wow! Such an informative instructable... The charger board looks like a useful addition to my USB armoury of devices. I was hoping to see explosions within the pie dish of doom!

A search for molex brings up multiple rather affordable offerings. Any recommendations for a crimping tool? They seem to range from extremely cheap to extremely expensive!

I've been saving up a small stash of these batteries, now I just need to buy some Molex connectors :)

500, 1/2 the 1000, half the time no?

This was a great video and timed well for a current project. I 3D printed address numbers for our mailbox using glow in the dark PLA and added "UV" LEDs that makes it fluoresce a nice blue-green. I needed a simple and cheap power source and this video has some easy to use ideas from all of the scrap I have laying around.

hey clive you could of used the pcb i sent you and made a light lol

A lovely video, it contains a lot of small tricks and tips. Thank you for sharing your experience.

Frank