Create Your Own 18650 Charger For 5$ Or Less

diy

This DIY project provided me with a new charger for my 18650 batteries.

The next timelaps shows the how…

Fun little project that took me about an hour to make.

Something to think about

After the timelapse I started to do some heavy testing and found out that only double sided sticky tape is not enough to keep it together.
The TP4056 gets a bit warm when charging and the tape lets loose. So I smothered it with hot glue and now it works fine.

Conclusion

It works great. I did have to find my best charger adapter with the most amps to give.
It will of course charge with a simple 1 Amp USB charger but it will take 4 times as long.
I found that I have a 5 volts 2.5 Ampere adapter and it will work fine. I thought about
finding a 4 Ampere charger but that would defeat the purpose of a 5 bucks or less charger.

I don’t mind that charging takes a bit longer as the batteries I am charging are old and
revived and I have lots of them. I also had the old Mini USB TP4056 modules lying around
doing nothing, because I nowadays only use the newer ones (micro USB).

Happy with the result.