I'm dipping my toe into the world of electronics for a new project: copper pipe flashlight. This is a different type of project for me and I'm interested to learn more about designing at this smaller scale. I've also got in mind to try selling a few of them to see what that's like.
When designing seating, I've learned to hold off on refining the design until sourcing all "off the shelf" components (cushions for seating.) I started with a sketch to identify which components I'd attempt to make (custom) vs find (standard):
- Copper Housing (Custom)
- Battery (Standard)
- LED light (Standard)
- Control chip / Input(Standard)
- Armature (Custom)
- End Caps (Custom)
- Input Module(Stnadard
I started my research by tackling the biggest unknown: the battery. I liked the idea of recycling Lithium Ion batteries from dead phone charger packs, but wasn't sure if/how that would work. I started by learning about the different types of batteries, and very quickly fell down a rabbit hole of information. There's SO much information on batteries (and most everything I've looked into) it can almost be overwhelming. Here's one of the better battery-type summary videos I found.
While down the battery rabbit hole, I learned about the 18650 Li-ion battery, which is the most common cell for power packs as well as most laptop batteries. The battery is 18mm x 65mm and has excellent power density. There seems to be a decent community t seems like there's even a community around salving these batteries from discarded battery packs and re-purposing them. There's of course the risk of an explosion, but using the proper precautions should minimize the risk.
Gotta Love AvE!