Battery Charging Station

I am mildly obsessed with flashlights.  These flashlights take fancy 18650 lithium ion batteries that can be recharged.  I have a lot of light accessories, spare batteries from laptops, and other things that need storage and organization.  Similarly cameras tend to have their own specialized batteries that need storage and charging.  I built a flexible station to hold all my chargers in one place.  Later I added an extras organizer from a repurposed storage box.

I started with all the specialized chargers I could find.  Two for flashlight batteries and two for cameras.  I decided to go for the pedal board route.  Guitarists can have a lot of effects pedals for their instruments.  Instead of having them all splayed across the floor they tend to put them on a thin box using velcro.  The box has slits that allow cables to pass inside the box out of the way.

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I built it to fit a shelf in my office closet and made it wide enough to expand with new charger capacity if need be.  Nothing special, just some pine I had hanging out.  The chargers are held at about a 60 degree angle, and there is space in the back to strap down a power strip.

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I wanted it dark to help hide the dark cables and velcro.  I never have good luck staining pine, but mixed up a water based dye blend.  It turned out great!

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With velcro and power strip in place I could start attaching chargers.

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A 4×1 outlet extender lets you plug in chargers that are supposed to go directly into a wall outlet.  I added a device called a blackout buddy.  Eaton makes them and they are red cross branded.  It plugs in and charges itself.  When the power goes out it turn on the light so can see.  Now when our power goes out I can find my way to the flashlight stash in the dark.  It fit like a charm on the shelf in my closet.

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Next up I pulled an old drawer storage box thing out of the trash.  It used to have board games in it, but was destined for the dump.  I thought the all-wood construction it was worth saving.  After re-gluing a few bad joints it was in good shape.

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The bottom drawer houses all the extra batteries I had from laptop pulls and random purchases.  I printed a number of organizers to keep them from touching.  Every organizer positively holds the battery in place so they can’t come out and can’t touch each other.  Keeping them from touching is an important part of preventing battery damage and fires.  Plenty of room left to store more batteries.

The middle drawer has random flashlight stuff.  O-rings, manuals, cases, etc.  I printed some dividers to hot glue down to keep the drawer from being a mess every time you open and close the drawer.

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Lastly I threw some of my DSLR gear in the top drawer because I never really had a good place for it.  3D printing and woodworking come together to help organize and support my camera and flashlight fixations.  What a gorgeous synergy!

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Flexing Flashlight Helper

My name is Chase and I have a flashlight problem.  OK, not really, but I love flashlights.  The modern surface mount LEDs can be really efficient and have gorgeous color rendering.  Gone are the days of blueish sterile white light.  I have a small fleet of flashlights that run on 18650 lithium ion batteries.  The lights run a long time, are rechargeable, and have a variety of light settings from stun to kill.

Most of them come in some form of all black tactical form factor.  That is great for clipping to a belt, or holding in the backyard.  What they aren’t always the best for is home projects.  They tail stand ok, but are easy to tip over.  I need something that will give me a stable base and let me point the flashlight where I want.  Enter loc-line.

I started with a finished shot because it is a little convoluted if you aren’t familiar with some of the components.  I had left over loc-line from a CNC mill vacuum project.  This is 3/4″ line, and can be found in kits for reasonable prices from amazon and elsewhere.  I started by prepping a base from some 3/4″ plywood, painting it a zazzy orange, and attaching a screw down base.

The loc-line will snap onto that orange base, and provide flexibility to point the flashlight.  To hold the flashlight I found this snap on 1/2″ PVC fitting.  It came with the cutout, and a threaded female fitting.  Most of my flashlights fit nicely in the opening and their clips help keep everything in place.

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A threaded 1/2″ PVC fitting went on some 1/2″ pipe.  This will all fit inside the open end of the loc-line.  I thought about using epoxy to bond the two together, but I don’t know how well glue sticks to the blue plastic and there is a huge gap to fill.  Small screws in pre-drilled holes did a really good job of fixing both halves together.

Once fixed I spray painted the PVC holder section to match the blue loc-line as much as possible.  In retrospect it would have been easier to paint before I attached.  Live and learn.  Now I can have blinding light pointed in any direction when I am under the sink, changing outlets, or anywhere else.