Watch out for things that are not as they appear.
I have a cheap 3V battery shaver which has been the bane of my life, but I need it and a more expensive unit is out of the question. And look - I have some old 18650 batteries out of old laptops that are perfectly okay, and would save me 2 AA batteries every five weeks or so.
So I found some cute little USB-C to Li-Ion battery management type systems, separate output with low voltage cutout, and they are cheap, around two Aussie bucks and a five week wait. (*sigh* what is it with postal services? making a FORTUNE with all the parcel traffic the last few years, apparently pissed it up against the wall because the services are experiencing less traffic now but are still as slow or in some cases even slower... Australia Post I'm looking at you.)
Butchered the case to fit the cell and board, found a way to fit it so the USB socket is hidden under the old battery cover, wired it up and - SUCCESS! PROFIT! (Well not so much profit but SAVINGS!) then I plugged in the USB and SUCCESS! CHARGING! and that was all excellent so I clipped the covers together
... and the magic smoke came out ...
Mislabel(ed)
Why would an inside label in a dirt cheap no-name no-brand shaver be made out of aluminium and not Mylar? Where the hell did they even GET aluminium labels from?
Anyway.
The label has been removed, shredded, and chucked out. And luckily when it comes to cheap parts like this I work on the prepper credo "Two is One and One is None" ("and Three is Probably Better" - Ted's Corollary to the Credo) and I'd actually bought a pack of three. After a brief cool-down (me, that is, the poor little board died silently) I'll go back and un-glue the dead board and fit a new one.
Anyhow if I recharge the 18650 just once over the next three months I'll have recouped the monetary and environmental cost of the four AA batteries I'd have consumed. (Note to self: Also remember to put two diodes in series with the motor to drop the voltage a bit, it was running VERY fast on the 5V output...)
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