Even since I saw jacqueline’s purple reform battery cells I knew I had to do something with mine. And I knew it had to be a rainbow. Unfortunately it turns out that 18650 battery sleeves are never sold in eight rainbow colors and single colors come in packs of 100. After getting ripped off by some shady China shops twice, I now finally acquired eight differently heat shrink tubes that fit 18650 batteries and voila:
Wait… how is the reform standing on its side? Glad you ask! In Adding LTE Modem and other USB devices I already showed my custom 3d-printed left-hand-side port cover (adding a hole for micro-usb and some extra elements on the inside to hold one of the other plastic board holders). Now I also 3d-printed the right-hand-side port cover and added material such that the reform can now stand on its side:
The piece is shaped such that the force of the reform’s weight presses against the acrylic bottom panel. This way, I can charge my reform without having it take up much space in our tiny flat.
Also, while in the past, eremit shipped their lifepo4 cells in a very dark-brown purple, they now sleeve their cells with a much brighter “real” purple.
My 3 new cells from eremit are the two at the very left and the one purple cell at the bottom. The purple cell on the right was manually sleeved by me.
Great point and nice solution. The guts of your Reform looks seriously so busy. I am surprised you were able to get it all in there. What exactly do you have in there that is additional?
I also noticed that Eremit is sending the 2000mah cell with a real purple sleeve now as well.
For the moment I have 7 browns and 1 purple. Eventually they’ll all be purple. Although I have a soft spot for the blue ones that my Reform orginally came with.
Adding another battery image to the pile, hope that’s okay. Otherwise, apologies for reviving a 6-mo old thread, feel free to moderate/delete.
I got 18650 shrinks from amazon, and various colors of 3/8" 3:1 shrink on all the battery clips. Outer clip color marks the overall pack potential 1-5.
Dimensions: battery clip covers were cut ~17mm and the center was a 1/4" hole punch just barely off center. Cut slightly longer to ensure it covers the metal at the top if you care a lot about insulation, and then pinch as its cooling.
I had to hold the clip covers down in place with a stick during shrink because they wanted to move around a lot. They’re also malleable when hot so it’s easy to nudge around the holes for the connections.
Mostly just an exercise in arts and crafts but also I have a ton of stuff leftover and i’m could put some in a usps letter for someone if you send me a message sometime in the next month or three (eventually I’ll just donate the rest to a local hackerspace).
