Don't throw away your old cartridge - turn it into a power bank
Thinking about another homemade product, I realized that there is no strong Powerbank. The idea of a structure in a pipe was immediately formed. But I didn’t want to take a PVC pipe. Soldering it is not a problem, but it’s somehow handicraft. As always, I came across an old laser printer cartridge just in time. The cartridge contains a photo drum. It is painted, has a strong construction, and is lightweight. The drum is hollow inside. Its case will fit a pair perfectly 18650 batteries. It’s decided, we’ll take a photo of the drum in the housing.
Making a Powerbank from a Printer Cartridge
We take the cartridge. If there is a lot of toner in it, then clean it. Mine was old and there was just a little bit of toner. But that didn't stop me from getting dirty.
In general, we remove the photo drum and cartridge. Everything is simple here, you need to unscrew a pair of screws on both sides of the cartridge. I only left the drum and the screws, and threw out the rest. There is a lot of toner flying in all directions.
We clean the photo drum of toner, the body is not scratched, excellent.
Using a hot air gun, I remove the guides. They are made of plastic and come out of the body well.
For the Powerbank design I will use two batteries with residual capacity as in the photo. For my ASUS Android background, it was enough for one and a half times.
Used as a boost converter module from China. It is compact and has proven itself to be excellent.
Charge batteries will charge controller with protection. You can do without it, but you definitely need it. You can use a scarf from a mobile phone battery.
I will turn on the boost converter with a micro toggle switch. Great size, fits perfectly.
Assembly
We solder the batteries with negatives to each other. We solder the wire to the connection point. We do the same with the plus. Since the batteries are used, when disassembling I recommend not tearing off the nickel-plated tape, but cutting it off. This makes it easier to solder the wires to it later. One minus came off and I had to carefully solder it. We bring the wires to one side, there will be a charge controller.
The plugs for the case, as well as the board holders, were cut out of plastic. PVC plastic, I really enjoyed working with it. Soft, processed with a construction knife.
I mark the holes for all the connectors and the switch. I cut with a knife. I make small recesses for the boards.
I attach the boards with thermal glue. Holds up perfectly, pressure does not squeeze out from the outside.
Solder the wires to the controller. From the controller to the other side of the tube to the boost converter board.
To fix the batteries in the case, I will use pieces of wine cork. You need to cut off a piece of the plug to allow free passage of wires. We insert the batteries, the plug and install the plug with the charge controller. Everything is holding up great.
We solder the switch on the plug on the side of the boost converter. We break the positive or negative power wire. The one that comes from the battery charge controller.
The wires are unsoldered.We carefully insert everything into the case and do not forget about the wine cork. You can also glue it with super glue.
This is what the side of the converter looks like.
This is what it looks like from the charging connector.
So they shine through LEDs indications during operation. You can drill a hole and fill it with hot glue, but I didn’t bother and left it as is.
This is such a strong and quite convenient Powerbank. In general, I think a photo drum is a good element for something like this. I recommend repeating this device.
