18650 Conversions

I recently visited my great uncle, who has quite a collection of electronic components. He gave me some 18650 lithium cells to experiment with. I decided to convert some existing battery-powered devices to use them.

 I had a few additional batteries that I saved from a teacher in high school, and one that I salvaged from an old vacuum cleaner. I ordered battery holders and protection boards from Amazon, and used switches that I already had. All of the projects required a protection board, except the power bank.

protection boards:

battery holders:

I converted parts of a small flashlight to use one 18650 instead of three AAAs. 

I created an insert for a large flashlight to replace three D batteries with one 18650, using PVC as a spacer. This insert fits inside the flashlight and doesn't change the look of the outside.

Another project was a power bank for charging cell phones. I used the board from an existing power bank, and added a switch because it kept draining itself. 

The device I use the most so far is a fabric shaver. Having rechargeable batteries that are easy to remove is an advantage, because it gets used a lot, and then stored for a while. This was more complicated because it originally used two AA cells which add up to three volts, but 18650s are around 4.2 volts  when fully charged. I added a diode to drop the voltage by about one volt. I also added a light so I could see the fabric better