Using 18650 laptop batteries for my drills

[pinkpanda3310]

I've been to tool repair shops and asked for redundant battery packs before. Too many nicads, lots of l-ion and I was really lucky one day and got a heap of A123's. I didn't take any nicad's but it was all free Just had to be careful not to mix the batteries as they obviously had different cycle life.

[sikeston34m]

Something I'm playing around with here lately is:

Leave the pcb inline to protect the cells on the pack, then use a dc to dc converter to adjust the output voltage to match whatever is being powered.

Small dc to dc converters are pretty cheap. I just bought a 3 amp unit off Ebay.

It's specs are:

Input Voltage: 3-30VDC.
Output voltage: 1.3-18VDC.
Max output current: 3A.
Built in LM2596S-ADJ.
Compact size. (about 1 1/2" x 1 1/2")

For lighting, this would be a great thing.

It has a pretty wide input range. (as low as 1s or as high as 7s)

I'm thinking it could run a large amount of Led lighting in the event of a power outage.